We all know that advertisements on websites are annoying; for example those banner ads with bright flashing colours. It makes us want to use the website in question less. We all know that the way Google does its advertisements—”non-intrusively—”is much better for all concerned: the website (users are less annoyed), the users (they are less annoyed) and the advertising customers themselves.

Just now my computer was incredibly slow. I looked at the task manager and saw Firefox was at 70%. I had no idea why, but I looked at all the windows and one tab of one window was a consumer website with a big moving banner advertisement. I wasn't using the tab, but I like to have that website open (as I do many others).

Suspecting that was the reason for Firefox using so much CPU I closed the tax with the task manager open and indeed thereafter the CPU usage of Firefox reduced to 0%.

So that means that website is effectively preventing me from having its window open, as having its window open prevents me from working. So now I have gmail, Facebook, BBC News and a few other websites open, but not that one. I wonder if that's what the people running the website really want?

P.S. Safari reduces the speed of Flash animations on windows which do not have the focus, to save CPU consumption.

P.P.S. In addition to just making my computer slower, it would deplete my laptop battery faster.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe to Adrian's blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.