Ghostery and website tracking, etc.

Jul 4, 2014 - PandoDaily - I just installed a tool which shows how popular websites are spying on me. The results are horrifying

When JavaScript is disabled, a website, especially a media-based site, loads considerably quicker. Instead of taking several seconds to load when JavaScript is enabled, the site will load in under a second with JavaScript disabled. And as long as the content of the article is displayed, that's all the matters.

If the JavaScript was used only to help the user, that would be okay. But a lot of the crap is ad-based, tracking-based, etc. Cruft.

Some of the JavaScript, however, is meant to improve the user experience, but too many sites are bogging themselves down with trying to create a native app-like experience in the browser. So on older machines, the heavy JavaScript sites use more CPU.

From the PandoDaily article:

What I didn’t know is how absolutely out of control the number of trackers on popular sites has become. It’s actually horrifying.

Earlier today I met with an entrepreneur who is working on some neat-sounding software that allows us to improve our “related articles” recommendations for readers. To prove how many different sites already use his software, he showed me the results from a browser extension called Ghostery which shows which trackers are embedded in any given page.

Every site he visited contained at least one piece of tracking code, but some showed dozens. That’s dozens of different companies, or divisions of companies, watching you every time you visit a single web page. Those creepy ads that follow you from site to site, reminding you about products you once looked at? Yeah — that’s one tracker. Imagine how much a dozen trackers know about you.

https://www.ghostery.com/en/ - browser plug-in.

The browser that I use the most on my laptop is Chrome.

When I want to surf the web with JavaScript disabled, I use Firefox, since I have JavaScript disabled globally in the browser.

In Chrome, I have rules setup to disable JavaScript for a few sites, such as the ToledoBlade.com.

Reading the Blade website with JavaScripe enabled is a horrible experience. The Blade uses too many slide-down and slide-in adds. When copying text, it adds that "read more" crap to the copied text like many media sites do.

The Toledo Blade website will take several seconds to load with JavaScript enabled, even for an article page. It's terrible. It's piggish and bloated. But an article page will load nearly instantly with JavaScript disabled. It's a much better experience.

Maybe media sites should offer paying customers a version of their site without all the JavaScript crap. It might be worth a subscription fee if the org produced a pleasant reading experience. One possible design idea for an article page, read by a paying customer.

JulFor the To

Adify
Advertising
Advertising.com
Advertising
BlueKai
Beacons
Casale Media
Advertising
ChartBeat
Analytics
Criteo
Advertising
Dotomi
Beacons
DoubleClick
Advertising
Facebook Connect
Widgets, Social
Google Adsense
Advertising
Google AdWords Conversion
Advertising
Google Analytics
Analytics, Analytics
Google+ Platform
Widgets, Social
Lotame
Beacons, Analytics, Lead Management
MediaMath
Advertising
Pinterest
Widgets, Social
Press+
Widgets, Affiliate Marketing
Quantcast
Advertising
Rubicon
Advertising
ScoreCard Research Beacon
Beacons, Analytics
Turn
Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Lead Management
Twitter Button
Widgets, Social
Zedo
Advertising
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How to disable JavaScript in Chrome browser:

(pulldown menu) -> settings
-> show advanced settings
-> privacy
-> content settings
-> (pop-up menu)
-> Do not allow any site to run JavaScript
-> Done

To disable JavaScript in Chrome for a specific website, do the following:

• click the three-lined icon in the upper right corner of the browser.
• near the bottom of the menu, click "Settings."
• scroll to the bottom and click "Show advanced settings."
• underneath "Privacy," click "Content Settings."
• underneath "JavaScript," leave the radio button clicked for "Allow all sites to run JavaScript (recommended)" and click the button for "Manage exceptions."
• in the text input field for "Hostname pattern," add this text:
  [*.]toledoblade.com
  and then select "Block" from the dropdown.
• click "Done."
• click "Done" again.
• close "Settings" browser tab.
• reload an article page or visit the website.

No more pop-ups. No more slide overs. You won't be able read Facebook comments on article pages, but I don't care about those anyway.

But the biggest change will be in page load speed. Article pages will load much faster without the bloated JavaScript. This I like.

If you want JavaScript working, try visiting their mobile site at http://m.toledoblade.com which is simpler and much less cluttered. It loads faster.

#media - #browser - #javascript