"links to remote advertising "spot placements" and all the flashy sidebars, popups, animations, etc. Since the links are often to other servers, it requires the "successful cooperation" of as many as a dozen different sites to display a single page. If any one of the Scripted ads fails to load the news page "fails" and is inaccessible until it's fixed, since it loads all the linked ads before displaying the article "

yes, they do this...but I see very little of those extraneous things, because I have Proxomitron as a filter. On 'most' pages where a Flash file is my target, I see either nothing, or a blank box where the ad was supposed to be, or a little green Proxomitron icon, with an option to view the item it has hidden. I see **NO** popups unless I have disabled Proxomitron..(which I have to do for certain javascript applications, and even those could be controlled if I cared to tweak the Prox. settings carefully)

I have no vested interest in getting anyone to use Flash or to even go to Flash-enabled pages...but I sometimes want to see what's there, and I really don't have to endure all the crap they try to 'provide' me (*grin*).

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foolestroupe-"but PDFs, SWFs (Flash) etc all are humongously large -"

*shrug*...I guess 'humongously' is relative. I went and got those " 'Pills to Purge Melancholy' files", and they are a minor item on a 160 gig drive, easy to download with broadband and they open almost instantly with the PDF reader I use..(not Adobe!)

I do remember the days of Windows 3.1 on 14400 dialup, when I could barely read Mudcat...with 1.4 meg floppies for storage, and the days of Windows 98 II on a slow machine with a 20 gig drive and no external HDs I could afford...(and no USB!)

Now faster & larger is somewhat affordable, and I have a 'moderate' machine that copes with all I really need...plus a 250 gig external HD to store stuff and do backups with.

I am a 67 year old woodworker who is greedy...*grin*...so I work extra hard to find solutions to my music and surfing needs desires, and to defeat all the forces trying to show me stuff I DON'T want.