They're more annoying than pop-ups, and they're even harder to get rid of -- they're called shoshkeles, overlaying Flash ads. They often contain sound effects to accompany the animation, and they usually float around the screen, blocking the content of a webpage. Although most of the time, there is a convenient "close" button to be found nearby, more and more shoshkeles ads are omitting the button altogether, forcing the user to watch the 5-10 second animation. Unlike pop-ups, there is no convenient way to block these ads besides disabling Flash altogether, undesirable in most cases. As more advertisers catch on to this growing trend, I'm afraid that they're going to start launching minute-long shoshkeles ad campaigns on web surfers, and with the growing number of pop-up stoppers, I do not find this hard to believe at all. What are your opinions on this?

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Well all I can say to people is use them at your own risk as many people will go elsewhere in the long run. Msn.co.uk is one of the worst offenders I've seen and I never even think about visiting it anymore. They'll probably end up blaming something else, but as long as people have the option of different providers of content, sites are going to have to be careful about what they put on their sites and for how long.

Rob

What a name!!! Shoshkeles...

I have seen this a few times already, a long time ago. Ever since I disabled Flash on my browser, I don't get them anymore...

You may think it's undesirable to 'disable' Flash but I personally have not regretted doing that... yet.

There was this one time, not too long ago, where I followed a link to an 'exclusive' story on the WWW and to view this article, I had to agree to watch this 'Shoshkeles' ad for a while...

I was pleasantly surprised that having agreed to view the ad, I was spared the grief of actually watching the ad because I had Flash disabled, so I just hit next to get to the article! Definitely something to think about...

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J de Silva
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Hmm...that doesn't really sound like a shoshkeles ad to me. It seems like an intercepting page that just happens to have a Flash movie on it. Shoshkeles ads are actually Flash movies that float over the content of a page. You can see some examples http://www.unitedvirtualities.com/shoshkeles.htm.

How exactly do I disable Flash? I might have to do it if I can't find a "click to view flash" hack for IE.

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Its not exactly IE, but it uses the same engine: avant Browser has flash filtering but most people seem to recommend the mozilla alternative.

Rob

Perhaps you're right, perhaps it was not a shoshkeles ad but I am sure if I had actually watched the ad, I wouldn't have been able to stop/skip it... so I assumed it was the same thing.


What I did to disable Flash on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 is:

Click on Tools in the Menu, select Internet Options, click on the Security tab. Then (for the Internet zone) click on the button, Custom Level... and disable every option under ActiveX controls and plug-ins.

It has been a while since I did it, so I am not certain if that's the only thing I did...

One thing's for sure though - I haven't seen a Flash 'movie' in a LONG time

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J de Silva
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From your experiences, do you think that the intercepting Flash ad (that you should have had to watch ) would have been more annoying than the shoshkeles ads?

Thanks! I set them all to prompt except one, which I disabled. I'll be testing them on that shoshkeles page.

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