Google Studies How Bad Interstitials Are On Mobile 259
An anonymous reader writes: A Google study of their own Google+ site and app found that 69% of visitors abandoned the page when presented with the app interstitial. Google said it was getting rid of them and asked others to do the same. TechCrunch reports: "It's worth noting that Google's study was small scale, since the company was only looking at how an interstitial promoting the Google+ social service native app performed (and we don't know how many people it surveyed). It may very well be the case that visitors really didn't want the Google+ app specifically — and that Google+ itself is skewing the data. (Sadly Google is not offering comparative stats with, say, the Gmail app interstitial, so we can but speculate.)"
interstitial? (Score:5, Funny)
That too would get me to abandon the website.
Browsing with mosquitoes (Score:5, Insightful)
I had to look it up also.
An "interstitial" pops up before the page you want, or a few seconds after.
It's a speed-bump in reading the website: stop, grab the mouse, find the close mark, get rid of the thing, and continue.
It's basically adding mosquitoes to your browsing experience.
(Some of them don't even have the "X" corner icon. You have to choose one of the presented links to close.)
Re:Browsing with mosquitoes (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a speed-bump in reading the website: stop, grab the mouse, find the close mark, get rid of the thing, and continue.
Oh, how I hate these things! Ad-block doesn't even block them all(because they're often not ads).
1. Download the app! Really? First time here, don't want to mess with that!
2. Like us on X media! I haven't even read one article of yours yet! Have a 1 star because the first thing you did was piss me off!
3. Do you want to sign up for our newsletter? See above, I found you on a random google search for information. NO.
4. Are you willing to review our website? Sure. Part 1: Get rid of the immediate popoup!
Fuck those things (Score:4, Insightful)
One common thing they do is grey out the background so the box draws your attention. Can we stop that somehow?
Re:Fuck those things (Score:4, Funny)
That, and they never go away unless you just get the app and never visit their site without it.
https://xkcd.com/1174/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Fuck those things (Score:5, Informative)
You can usually adblock the greying out. There are two strategies:
A) Try to adblock the overlay, which is usually a named DIV, using element hiding rules. This is usually quite effective.
B) Block the Javascript files that generate the overlay. This can also be done with NoScript of course.
Some sites are wise to (A) now so they add the overlay DIV with Javascript after the page has loaded, so (B) is necessary. Some are now wise to both, but you can still block them with Javascript. At that point though, I think you have to question if it is worth visiting those sites at all.
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I see these as "you don't really want to go to this site, it is most likely clickbait advertising spammy useless website."
I file it under "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" Now, if everyone would stop visiting these sites, they will die, and go away.
JS-only sites (Score:2)
Install NoScript, and a lot of Blogspot blogs (such as the featured article) will just show the spinning gears GIF forever until you whitelist the site, at which point the crap returns.
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There are Greasemonkey scripts that can bypass most of them, such as AdsBypass. Unfortunately you need a number of them to cover all sites.
It seems like there is an opportunity here for an AdBlock like plug-in that can download communal Javascript code to skip these ads. It would need more checking that AdBlock rules though, because it would actually be running Javascript.
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Heh, at that point it's no longer an 'ad-blocker' so much as it's an 'annoyance blocker'.
I wonder what the courts would say about that one.
"No, your honor, my plug-in is NOT deliberately targeted at ads. It does just as it's name implies, it blocks annoyances on websites. It also blocks XYZ types of malware, prevents audio and video from automatically playing when the site is opened, those boxes that follow your screen around, and a number of other annoyances, making the browsing experience less of a hass
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because it's copypasta spam.
Thank you, come again. Or better yet, don't.
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oh fuck off already.
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in my experience HTML5 video interstitials are still uncommon
I've seen HTML5 video interstitials when browsing Wikia with an Android device.
Re:Browsing with mosquitoes (Score:4, Interesting)
when I am on my phone there are 2 types of pages that if i get them, i refuse to go to again
sites with popups that dont get blocked by adblock, no i dont care about what you are trying to sell me, show me what i asked for
the other is "list" sites, where they have a list that might have 10 photos and no (or very little text) yet they want me to load a new page for each item on the list. It is even worse if i can go to the site from a desktop and not have the page split over 10 pages so why do it to me on mobile? I know why (ads) and I dont care. I dont want to a - waste my time clicking next after i look at each slide for 5 seconds, and B i dont want to waste my phones data package on a bunch of ads, that take up more data than the content im looking for to begin with!
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Second, it does anyway for some POS F2P/P2W app [...] Solution? Android, F-Droid
I might be misunderstanding you, but how are apps available through F-Droid a substitute for "some POS F2P/P2W app"? I thought games were one of the few things free software had trouble providing.
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I find the close icon on the browser tab to be effective in those cases.
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Ah, so that annoyance. I usually leave pages that do that on the web as well and right away. They obviously do not care about their visitors. Probably the only thing these do is annoy people, I cannot really imagine anybody paying attention to them.
Re:Browsing with mosquitoes (Score:4)
Not reading the article is bad, but not even reading the headline?
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"Some of them don't even have the "X" corner icon."
Or worse, the Close X is slightly off the screen. At this point I have no choice but to abandon the website.
If it actively drives me away from you site by preventing em from going past a certain point, it's not an advertisement. We need a new term for it.
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"Some of them don't even have the "X" corner icon."
Or worse, the Close X is slightly off the screen. At this point I have no choice but to abandon the website.
If it actively drives me away from you site by preventing em from going past a certain point, it's not an advertisement. We need a new term for it.
We have one: it's basically a pop-up.
It behaves like one in every way, just the mechanics of how it's displayed is different...so maybe browsers need to dust off their 'pop-up blocker' option code and update it to block these damn things too? The simple fact that pop-ups were annoying enough to enough people that blocking them became a standard feature in browsers should perhaps be a hint to the people who use these things that their days are numbered...
Old pop-ups were easier to block (Score:2)
We have one: it's basically a pop-up.
It behaves like one in every way, just the mechanics of how it's displayed is different...so maybe browsers need to dust off their 'pop-up blocker' option code and update it to block these damn things too?
The difference in mechanics makes all the difference. Pop-up blockers could define a pop-up as a call to window.open without a click event below it in the call stack. Showing an in-page pop-up is just changing the visibility of an HTML element, and there are plenty of legit reasons to do that. To work around that, you'd have to put JavaScript on a whitelist; good luck managing such a whitelist on a 4" screen.
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subscription-based information portals are often referred to as "paywalls".
Softawre that installs third party components such as searchbars, BHOs, keyloggers and IRC clients without the users knowledge or consent are referred to as "scumware".
This is coercive advertising, that basically forces you into at least sampling what they have to offer if you want access to the information you asked for. This should be called "Scumwall".
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In this case they're not talking about the advertisement screens, but about websites that completely block mobile access and display a "download app" instead.
I know I've met a few such sites and just closed the browser tab instead.
Apparently I'm not allowed to see what one of their subscribers posted without having to sign away all my personal information first.
Those apps invariably need unrestricted access to my entire phone for me to view some pictures or read some text.
If I wanted to install an app for y
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Pinterest, Chicago Tribune, CPALead, Google Survey (Score:2)
(Some of them don't even have the "X" corner icon. You have to choose one of the presented links to close.)
Such as Pinterest ("There's more to see..."), Chicago Tribune, and any site using CPALead ("Please complete a survey to unlock this page") or Google Consumer Surveys ("Answer a question to continue reading this page"). Unfortunately, Google Search hasn't been good at demoting sites using these.
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I'm pretty sure I read this morning that these interstitials are what wiped out the wooly mammoth.
http://www.livescience.com/516... [livescience.com]
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Funny, I thought they were radio frequencies that are inserted between existing ones.
Re: interstitial? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: interstitial? (Score:5, Funny)
Do you pronounce that google-foo or google-eff-yoo?
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no, it's guggle-foo (like "foot" but without the "T").
Same likely holds true... (Score:5, Insightful)
The same thing could likely be said of all obtrusive advertising: it is a nuisance not a benefit.
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The same thing could likely be said of all obtrusive advertising: it is a nuisance not a benefit.
They aren't exactly the same, because interstitial ads aren't just obtrustive, they're interfering. You can't simply mentally resolve to ignore them; if you want to continue you've got to either follow the ad or find a way to dismiss it. This presents the user with a Hobson's Choice: physically respond to the ad, or go back.
A lot depends on how motivated you are to get at the content. If it's something you've clicked out of idle curiosity, you'll back away. If it's something you really want to see you'
Re:Same likely holds true... (Score:5, Informative)
I recent got a new car (well new to me) and one of the things i want to do is get fitted seat covers as the interior is an off white and i am....well a slob
so after looking for a few weeks i havent found anything that fits my needs (fitted, not leather or fake leather, and well made)
well I noticed some ads all of a sudden starting to show up for fitted car seats and eventually i found what i was looking for because of google ads
I will admit it is the first time ive found it useful, but when ads are done right, they are not a bad thing
Re:Same likely holds true... (Score:5, Informative)
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I hear this complaint often on Slashdot, but I don't see any way it could be resolved without a massive invasion of privacy (telling the advertisers that you bought something). Some ads have a "not interested" button, but it's too risky to click it.
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I'm guessing the vast majority of ad benefits come from impressions rather than clicks.
I don't think I've ever clicked on a movie ad, but I'm sure a lot of my movie choices come from movie ads.
Same thing for other products, the ads annoy you, but when you go to buy something the one you've seen the ad for suddenly looks a whole lot more credible and familiar.
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thats not entirely true. some ads are welcome
I recent got a new car (well new to me) and one of the things i want to do is get fitted seat covers as the interior is an off white and i am....well a slob
so after looking for a few weeks i havent found anything that fits my needs (fitted, not leather or fake leather, and well made)
well I noticed some ads all of a sudden starting to show up for fitted car seats and eventually i found what i was looking for because of google ads
I will admit it is the first time ive found it useful, but when ads are done right, they are not a bad thing
Much less helpful is when you google for something you need, find it, buy it, then keep getting ads for something you already purchased and have absolutely no need to purchase again...how long after you bought your seat covers did you keep getting ads for them, do you remember? I have friends who bought a new(ish) vehicle over a year ago, yet their displayed ads are still heavily slanted towards local vehicle dealerships...
What would, possibly, make these ads useful (maybe) is if the user could 'x' them ou
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advertising is theft.
Properly implemented advertising is what makes the internet "free". As with pretty much anything it can be abused or taken too far, but when you visit a page and read the content, that banner ad / sidebar ad(s) you ignore automatically are probably a large part of how that site stays up. At some point someone had to pay (money or time) to make that site, put it on a server and send those bits over the internet.
Weren't we talking about interstitial app offers though? We seem to have gotten a bit off course.
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Two weeks later...
"Would you like to try our cancer management service?"
"Don't buy lung cancer without trying prostate cancer first!"
[typo guess] "Check out our awesome brand of cancel!"
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well, wasn't that just incredibly generous of it?
I mean, it "gave" you cancer. You didn't suddenly, out of sheer nothing-else-to-do-ness, develop it. You were gifted a strange growth by an immaterial stream of information.
Would that we all were so lucky as you, this world would be a happy, if tumorous, place.
Continue Link Position (Score:2)
No kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is truly an epic fail to believe that some random visitor to your website is going to want to install your app just to read a piece of content—particularly if that user got there through a Google search. Yet for some reason, just about every forum out there pops up one of these idiotic app interstitials when I try to view some random post on their site. I didn't go there because I want to be a regular visitor to the site, which means I sure as h*** don't want to install their app just to read the tiny piece of content that may or may not even contain the information I need to do whatever I'm trying to get done.
The right time to ask a user to install an app is when the user creates an account on the site. Up until that point, the user is probably an infrequent visitor and is unlikely to want to install the app. Even at that point, the user may not want to install the app, but at least there's some nonzero possibility that he or she might.
Of course, the real train wreck is that there's no standard for making websites' contents available for app use, which would allow a user to install one reader that can read content on any of the dozen sites that he or she might be interested in. There's really no chance of me installing an app that only lets me read content from one website, because A. it is unlikely to be much better than viewing the website (because probably the same people designed it), and B. I already have more apps than I can deal with anyway. But if every website I visit standardized on a feed scheme, along with a common authentication system and a common reply system, I could see myself installing a single app that worked with all of them.
Re:No kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
But if every website I visit standardized on a feed scheme, along with a common authentication system and a common reply system, I could see myself installing a single app that worked with all of them.
During your rant, I couldn't help but think, 'But they DO have a standardized app for accessing all the websites', and it's called the browser!
This is interesting because I'm currently working to migrate our content into a 'responsive design' system that is geared to showing unbroken webpages, using the SAME site and code, on everything from fullscreen computers to the smaller phones.
I'll admit, the content might not be as 'perfect' as if it was designed specifically for one or the other on the matching device, but it's pretty good on all of them and doesn't actually take much design work on the part of the individual site creators. Given that they're non-web experts that's a good thing. The point is to present the information, not make it perfectly pretty.
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The problem is, mobile devices don't handle web forums very well. Web designers don't design their themes with mobile devices in mind, resulting in text that's too small to read, text entry fields that are too wide for the screen, etc. That's not true for every site, but it is pretty common.
An actual native app, by contrast, is likely to be designed by people who a
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I would question your assertion on the native app; often times native apps are a second-thought, not a dedicated project, and unless the company has someone who is well versed in mobile development, it's usually a programming team's first and last foray into mobile design.
The truth is that not a lot of businesses/locations need an app - there's little to no functionality that can be obtained via the app that cannot be replicated in browser with a little bit of elbow grease, and the small benefits that an ap
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An actual native app, by contrast, is likely to be designed by people who actually understand the platform and its limitations, its screen size, etc. So potentially, if done properly, it can produce a much better user experience than a browser is
I disagree with your premise entirely, the browser theme can be responsive to screen size and you can deliver a different theme based on browser strings, so there's no reason whatsoever that you can't take the device into consideration without having to do all the work yourself. But what I actually came to point out is that in practice most of these forums use tapatalk, and that tapatalk is a gigantic festering piece of shit.
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I disagree with your premise entirely, the browser theme can be responsive to screen size
That's exactly what our responsive design does. if you're viewing it on a wide screen, it does columns and has a nice menu to the side and such.
As the window narrows, it gets rid of the columns, and eventually reworks the menu as a button to maintain as much content visibility as possible.
As a bonus, you don't have to maximize the window, or at least get it over a thousand pixels wide for the site to render correctly. While 1920x1200 monitors are common as heck at my work, people also have a tendency to t
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some phones have higher screen resolution than my netbook.
Asus EeePC 1008HA: 1024x600
Motorola Droid Turbo: 1440p WQHD
Oppo Find 7: 1440p WQHD
LG G3: 1440p WQHD
Samsung Galaxy Note 4: 1440p WQHD
Sony Experia Z3: 1080p HD
Google Nexus 6: 1440p WQHD
Samsung Galaxy S5: 1080p HD/1440p WQHD (Korean variant)
I won't count iPhone 6S because while it has 1080p physical screen resolution, it uses just ninth of that area for point mapping and then extrapolates by 3x to fill the screen using a rasterisation process, just like
It's about physical size (Score:2)
A 1024x600 pixel netbook's screen is still physically larger than those phones. To actually read text on those without changing the layout, you'd need a magnifying glass. This is why the web browsers on these devices tend to interpret CSS 1px as 1.5, 2, or 3 actual pixels.
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During your rant, I couldn't help but think, 'But they DO have a standardized app for accessing all the websites', and it's called the browser!
More specifically, there are web apps! This gives the look-and-feel of an app, including an icon on the homescreen and offline access. All you need to do is add a few extra files to your existing website. Users won't have to go through the app store, and updates happen automatically.
This was the only kind of app on the original iPhone.
Also: obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
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You slap an icon onto my homescreen for a website I've visited once and have no intentions of visiting again and we're going to have issues...
Start using my cell phone's data plan to download content for offline access when, because it's a cell phone, offline is 'rare', for content that I probably don't care about, again, not good.
As long as it's optional, I'm fine with it.
And yes, the zoom thing is annoying.
Cap (Score:2)
Start using my cell phone's data plan to download content for offline access when, because it's a cell phone, offline is 'rare'
How is the time between when you have used up the 2 GB quota and the end of the billing month "rare"?
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During your rant, I couldn't help but think, 'But they DO have a standardized app for accessing all the websites', and it's called the browser!
I think that you're slightly missing the grandparent's point. About 10-15 years ago, there were two groups pushing new directions for the web. One group, led mostly by the W3C (though backed by Apple and a few other big companies) wanted to completely separate content and presentation. You'd have a service that would provide structured XML and then a web page or a native app that would process it and present it to the user. This would make it easy to write programs that aggregated data from multiple sou
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No useful content included.
Your comment sure was pretty, though.
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It is truly an epic fail to believe that some random visitor to your website is going to want to install your app just to read a piece of content—particularly if that user got there through a Google search. Yet for some reason, just about every forum out there pops up one of these idiotic app interstitials when I try to view some random post on their site. I didn't go there because I want to be a regular visitor to the site, which means I sure as h*** don't want to install their app just to read the tiny piece of content that may or may not even contain the information I need to do whatever I'm trying to get done.
The right time to ask a user to install an app is when the user creates an account on the site. Up until that point, the user is probably an infrequent visitor and is unlikely to want to install the app. Even at that point, the user may not want to install the app, but at least there's some nonzero possibility that he or she might.
Of course, the real train wreck is that there's no standard for making websites' contents available for app use, which would allow a user to install one reader that can read content on any of the dozen sites that he or she might be interested in. There's really no chance of me installing an app that only lets me read content from one website, because A. it is unlikely to be much better than viewing the website (because probably the same people designed it), and B. I already have more apps than I can deal with anyway. But if every website I visit standardized on a feed scheme, along with a common authentication system and a common reply system, I could see myself installing a single app that worked with all of them.
And despite what you say, the facebook app is pretty much standard on every user's smart phone, and the app only shows content from facebook, So, don't walk about thinking you just wrote a new law of nature. A billion others just disproved your law. You're not so special, kid. If installing apps was the only way you could get to content you wanted, you would be installing apps left and right. We all fly our flags high, until we get trampled by the hordes and become part of it,
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... and is used exclusively by people who have accounts on the site. That's a completely different usage model than just going to a website and browsing it, which is to say that you didn't really contradict my main point with that example.
Facebook is also a bit of an exception because of the sheer amount of time that many people spend on it, the potential benefits
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But for every exception, there are a thousand non-exceptions. Even though I have the FB app installed, I wouldn't really consider installing a Slashdot app
I would consider installing a Slashdot app, but I consider anyone who installs a Facebook app to be acting like they're new. The facebook app has shit upon users repeatedly, and that's basically what facebook exists to do. I would never trust facebook to run an app on my phone.
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I'd install a slashdot app but only if you'll like my cat pictures.
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That's because it gets shoved in there by the OEM and can't be removed without rooting the phone.
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Isn't that called a 'Web browser'?
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The problem is that RSS is one-directional. If I want to post, I still have to go back to a browser window and use whatever random, horrible, non-mobile-friendly interface the site designers came up with. And postin
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Which is exactly the point. On most sites, you just want to READ content. RSS is just fine for that.
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Even if I'm a regular visitor, I might not want to download anyone's app because I'm running out of space on my mobile phone. Too many of these loser specialized apps act like space is unlimited and cache many megabytes, nor can I customize its cache to save things on my external memory card which has many gigabytes free.
Even when having many gigabytes available I prefer Facebook in the browser over the app. I don't want the FB app to read (and upload) all my contacts, locations, etc...
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128 different apps (Score:2)
Yes, and how many of those apps ask for a copy of your address book ? I don't mind sharing if needed for a function, web privacy being a lost cause, but if you want to d/l my 5000 plus contact professional contact list, uh, NO.
Some people want to use a function that requires location; others don't. Some people want to use a function that requires the address book; others don't. If there are seven different permissions that can be used by an optional function, do you expect the developer to make 2^7 = 128 different apps, one for each specific combination of optional functions?
Why Interstitials Suck (Score:3)
The main reason is that if I'm going to a site, I want a specific page and when you dismiss an interstitial 9 times out of 10 instead of taking me to the content I want to view, it drops me on the sites main/landing page.
Its the same with popup/popover ads. On mobile these are a pain in the arse to close and they interfere with the content I'm trying to view, so again I'll just mash the back button until its gone.
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That's why I always just open links in new tabs, and if I get an interstitial, I just close the tab.
That doesn't always work unfortunately. Some pages are set up to redirect everyone to prevent this. When that happens I move my thumb 2 cm to the right to hit Androids menu button so I can swipe the offending page into oblivion.
Then I make a mental note never to go back there again.
Get out my way! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the real problem is... (Score:2)
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Dedicated app = buggy bloatware (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides that, I don't want a separate app for each site or forum I visit, that's overkill. I'll get too many notifications and have to download a ton of client updates constantly. I'd rather just visit a site when I choose to (and not be bugged by notifications) and have it work properly and be working with the most up to date version right away.,
These useless apps are what people wish weren't included with their desktops, why would they want them on mobile?
Interrupting is impolite. (Score:2)
Whether it happens on a computer or in person. Only a marketing dick, an MBA or a CEO would be dumb enough to miss the fact that it passes people off enough to drive people away from a Web site.
Yeah, So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Definition of an Interstitial (Score:2, Informative)
For those who don't know WTF an interstitial is, it's basically a pop-up that appears in a web page that blocks access to the rest of the page until you dismiss it. It's not like a traditional pop-up windows that adblockers can block easily these days, but rather integrated inside the page that many blockers don't deal with.
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Or at least an order of magnitude less acceptable than slapping your customers round the face with a wet fish.
Why did anyone need to do any research to discover that this was the optimal way of pissing of web users?
Slightly less annoying on iOS, but still (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate the stupid "hey we have an app!" block that takes up real estate at the top of the screen every freaking time I chance upon any one of a million stupid sites. No, I don't want the dedicated app for your website - I view it maybe twice a year! No, I don't want to install an app to participate on your forum! Nor do I want your website sending me push notifications on OS X, for that matter.
I understand that you can't figure out how to make a living from your website... but that's your problem, not mine. Maybe you need to get a real job like the rest of us.
How many people can't get rid of these things? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how many of these 69% abandonment were due to user error in trying to get rid of the damn thing. Especially on mobile platforms where the ad can take up the entire browser screen and the back button has no effect on it. When something unexpected happens and you end up on an unexpected page the logical thing to do is hit back. Unfortunately for this stupid advertising the back button has the result of leaving the page altogether to go to the previous one.
I'm quite bad at that. It takes a conscious effort on my part to make it past these popups the first time without accidentally leaving the page. I hope their statistics took that into account.
Actually I don't, I hope their numbers are over inflated and this stupid practice crashes and burns.
I dont want your APP! (Score:2)
I don't want your flash enabled or video/audio streamed content shoved down my throat.
Fuck.. so much of the time I just want to load up Lynx to mandate a better S/N ratio
I close the browser tab for interstitials (Score:2)
There are a number of websites that try to push interstitials to the desktop. When I get those blank pages with AdBlock Plus installed, I just close the browser tab. The story or photos are NEVER interesting enough to put up with that kind of shit.
Just mobile? (Score:3)
After years of abuse, I just instantly close a website now if it decides an interstitial ad is needed. Regardless of where I am browsing.
No content is worth the suffering, no video can have enough cats to justify the anguish.
I have no idea if my own droopy matters at all, but I like to think window closure after interstitial presentation is a metric tracked and at least I am increasing it.
Interstitial? (Score:3)
That word isn't in my vocabulary, but is that some kind of marketing wank's "web 2.0" shit?
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It was to describe an intermediate step between the user and the content and became popular in the 90s when people first introduced the "enter your birthday" pages or the "are you over 18?" pages before going to porn pages.
This is very much Web 0.8Beta shit.
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it's a term in biology referring to the space between membranes.
One wonders (Score:2)
what the benefit of this popup stuff is and who pays/earns something here? Developers must get paid somehow. Seems some idiotic pipe dream. I get this crap - desktop, try a page reload if it comes up again, tab close an if the "do you really want to do this" - or similar, I get really pissed. What are those idiots programming this shit thinking? Poerverts! If I get this on mobile, I get so pissed that I do something else, no mobilem
Maybe I just don't "get it" (Score:2)
I don't really even understand the app ecosystem.
It used to be we'd need to run a word-processor program to edit text.
A spreadsheet to manage numeric data.
An encyclopedia program to see images and text together.
Hell we even needed a 'website editor' to do that.
Now, ostensibly, we have a single browser on which I can do basic wordprocessing and spreadsheet work through google docs, edit websites, play fairly sophisticated games....all through the same browser.
Yet, on my phone I have 150 different goddamned a
Not serving me (Score:2)
Tapatalk is one of the most common, and seems to me to prove this point:
The mobile app you are being offered doesn't improve your experience as much as it does the app publisher's revenue. Apps will capture your data, contacts, and history on your mobile when better than your browser.
Apps will act as gateways for other apps, eventually leading to downloading something nasty without your knowledge, or masquerading as something benign.
Apps will force you into a mobile view, like it or not. Good for the sit
Interstitial, eh ? (Score:2)
I knew all those years of reading slashdot would pay off eventually.
Nuke Anything (extension) (Score:2)
Try it : it can get rid of overlay shit, including ribbons (top AND bottom) that halve your viewing space if you're on a short display.
That's on desktop though (Firefox). On mobile, if it exists, I don't know how you're supposed to right click on an element.
There's even one website that says "your mercy period has ended" (or whatever) after reading one article, and I'm supposed to log in. But the article is there under a pile of overlays, including a "greys out" one.
Re: (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
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Seriously, never heard this word before in my life.
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The last time I heard it was in high school biology. That was ... quite a few years ago.
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Well, it should mean something like "between the walls", but in context I've no idea...except that other people seem to be implying that it means you need to install a program to read the content of a web site. Truly a bad idea. So I guess that, say, Flash is an interstitial.