I was hoping I could get your attention and receive your feedback on my post found here:
http://www.techspot.com/staff/11/ads-and-more-ads/

Don't forget to visit the staff weblog every now and then, too

I know exactly what you mean by some websites having the adds in your face, to the detrement of the content of the site itself.

I think Techspot has got the balance just about right.

I don`t find the ads at Techspot distracting in the least. In fact I do sometimes enjoy looking at them, they brighten the place up a bit lol.

Keep up the good work.

Regards Howard

Oh, btw you can comment on the blog, too. No need to register or anything.

I totally agree with Howard, the balance you have struck is spot on.

Small glitch in the answer box after the article:
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I see some people here commenting that the balance of ads on this site is good. I don't know if things have changed since those posts or not, but I am having some detrimental problems when viewing threads.

When my mouse crosses over any of the underlined keywords, the dropdown box pops up giving more details RIGHT IN FRONT of the post I am trying to read. I find myself constantly being blocked by this windows, and unable to read posts until they disapear (which sometimes takes a long time)

Am I the only one? I am not exactly the most patient guy in the world, I admit, but still..... grrrrrrrr. :knock:

No im with you there. Those little links can get annoying. I ussualy hit back real fast (but if your in dial up then that may not be an option.)

You can avoid those popups by keeping your mouse away from the text you want to read.

I've found that once you hover over them, and they appear, you can click anywhere on the screen(not a link/ad/or other underlined text) and it will disappear quickly.

RealBlack, perhaps I am a gimp but even knowing that information does not help. I am in the habbit of using the mouse to skim as a read (I never realized it before, but I know now that my mouse moves around a lot). As I surely am not the only one with this addiction, I offer it as feedback for what it is worth. The ads here are detrimental to my forum experience, moreso than any other forum I have been a member of. Not enough to make me leave, as the people here are great!

And poernter, that trick does not work for me. The messages stay up, even if I attempt to "hover" over a different underlined text to get the unwanted popup out of my way. I am on firefox, perhaps this is why? I have the latest version.

They irritate me too Don, but only when I'm at work. In Opera, those things don't appear.

Just so you know, I'm hearing your feedback and will try to come to Vibrant Media (who provide those ads) to fix what seems to be the most annoying bug of IntelliTXT:

Normal behaviour should be:
Hover over a sponsored ad, shows you the information tooltip.
Then move your mouse out of the link, and ad dissapears within 1-2 seconds.

What I would call a bug:
When you are scrolling down a page or moving your mouse around the text in an article, and unintentionally you hover on one of the sponsored links, these don't seem to act normal. It takes 2-4 seconds for the tooltip to appear (the cursor is no longer pointing to the link), and then it won't dissapear unless you hover over it again, and then move away.

Cheers!

Here is some more info about the bug, and this MAY only be for firefox?

If I put my cursor intentionally over the underlined text and HOLD it there, the text pops up about a second later and disapears after I move my mouse away. This sounds like how it is SUPPOSED to work, according to what you say above.

The problem is if I do not INTENTIONALLY put my mouse over the text and hold it there. If I just put it there for a brief second and move it quickly away, the pop up text comes, and does not disappear. It stays there. I have to go back and reload the page to clear it.

Thanks again for the response, and I hope they have a fix for it

There is no need to refresh your page. If you mouse over the ad but mouse off before the tool tip appears, then all you need to do is mouse over the tool tip and away again ant it goes away.

Actually, that seems to be working. Nice tip. I'll report here if it gets stuck again. Cheers!

EDIT; well.... that tip KIND OF helps. It does make the text disapear as you said. But the text pops up again after a few seconds. So I can read the post, then blocked, then read the post a bit more, then blocked again by the popup, etc.

Even better is to select a DIFFERENT underlined text on the page to force the pop up in an area OTHER than where I am trying to read.

Your fix helps but still, the makers should do something about this.

Gotta love Vibrant Media support .

They have heard our complaints and the bugs mentioned in this thread have been fixed already.

Also for those of you visiting TechSpot regularly and not wanting to see IntelliTXT links, you have the option to disable IntelliTXT:

- Roll over a link and click on the ‘What’s this link.’
- At the bottom of the page click on the ‘Disable’ IntelliTXT link (please leave the window open for easy re-enabling).
- Next go back to your webpage and refresh. The IntelliTXT links should disappear.
- You can re-enable, by clicking the ‘Enable’ link on the ‘What’s this’ page or by clearing your browser cookies.

Now, as you know TechSpot is 100% ad supported, so if you have ever found any IntelliTXT ads attractive and have clicked on them, I would like to ask you not to remove them. Also, it wouldn't be a good idea to encourage other users to remove ads without a good reason, troubleshooting, etc.

I was yet another user annoyed by this recent IntelliTXT bug, however now that it's been fixed they are back to be almost transparent to my daily usage of the site.