Dear Websites: Please Stop Using Interstitials, Popups, and Fix Your Bad Code

Dear Websites:

I’ve run across a few websites and blogs recently running interstitials (the modern term for “popup windows that overlay not pop) and a variety of scripts and bad code that cause browser errors.

Please stop this.

The reasons are many, but here are a few.

1. We hate them.
2. Interstitials require effort on our part to close which is not a good first impression.
3. Interstitials work on the clueless not influencers, so check your stats to see if these are really turning into conversions or annoyance.
4. Browser errors popup warnings in our faces, which is ridiculous in this day and age when it is easy to fix all these and prevent them.
5. Update your site’s code regularly, for our sake but mostly your own, especially for security reasons. It makes us think bad things when your site is so out of date our browser warns us.
6. If your site is out of date in look, feel, and functionality, what do you think that says about your content, purpose, and business?

Thank you for updating your sites and fixing all errors today.

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

Dear TED, Don’t Force Yourself Upon Us

Dear Ted:

When it comes to changing the world, few do so more than TED videos. Your tag line, ideas worth spreading, is a humble way of describing the power and influence of your presentations by amazing people.

However, when it comes to presenting your videos, please help improve the world by making your videos not play automatically.

I will often cruise through and open several tabs of TED videos in my browser, then life will charge back in and I’ll have to feed the cats, take a phone call, pay bills, and respond to the mundane life a tech nag leads. If perchance I have to close and restart my browser for a million different reasons, I have to plow through fifty or more tabs to find which ones have the TED videos on to stop them from playing. I’ll suddenly have 3 to 7 voices all talking at me and the video downloads will slow down my computer and browser, not to mention my horrible Internet connection.

While I’m not sure it’s a web standard yet, it is should be. Either way, TED, you exist to change the world. Please set an example for all to follow and give us our control back. Allow us to press PLAY to lose ourselves in the wisdom of others and don’t force yourselves upon us.

Thank you,

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

Dear Skype, Please Stop Crashing My Browser

Dear Skype:

I’ve put up with a ton of issues from Adobe Flash crashing my browsers. Now Skype is my main crash deviant.

I’ve put up with your terrible new reinstall that spawns web pages and took FOREVER recently.

You think I’m kidding.

I’ve had Skype installed since Skype began. I’m frequently teased as I’m “Lorelle” on Skype, not “Lorelle254″ or some other silly name. I’m the first Lorelle that signed up for Skype, probably in your first 500-1000 registered users. I also pay for your service, so I’m qualified to rant and rave about your growing problems and my increasing frustration.

Logging in today, I was greeted by two confusing “Skype” disguised Internet Explorer browser windows. They were filled with ads but also with options and choices I had to make. I was in a hurry for a meeting and didn’t have time to mess around with reading all the stuff. I just needed to find my login.

It appeared that I would have to install Skype, so I did. Twenty minutes later, I’m now 15 minutes late for my online meeting and Skype is still not installed. Things are loading, whirling, clicking, and my state-of-the-art, powerful computer is locking up and dragging as it consumes memory and hard drive activity. Ten minutes later, it installs, but I’m still clicking around trying to just find a login. I finally find the familiar buttons and open it up, only to have those two damn Internet Explorer windows pop up, covering everything, selling me more Skype crap.

I apologize to the client and life goes on, both of us cursing Skype and browsers, and Internet software in general.

When I’m done, I’m so furious, I completely log out and quit Skype.

Then my browser crashes. Why? The installed Skype Toolbars that I worked so hard to remove multiple times because they crash both Chrome and Firefox on a regular basis, usually at the worst of times.

I have to go into the Extensions and Plugins of each browser and disable the Skype Toolbar Plugins.

A few hours later, I’m up against a deadline when my computer goes wonky. I’ll save the long, horrible story and sum it up as an hour and a half of wasted time spent banging my head against my desk as I couldn’t get control of my mouse or keyboard as everything turned to molasses speeds. I rarely ever use Internet Explorer and it hasn’t been my default browser for nearly ten years and yet two Internet Explorer windows filled with Skype promotional crap kept popping up and wouldn’t close.

I managed to crawl through my Windows Task Manager and found NO evidence of Skype on, active, or in process, and yet something kept spawning these Skype Internet Explorer windows. I finally turned off my computer, losing much of my article, and rebooted.

I went through everything and cannot find anything that activates Skype without my manual permission and action to ensure this wouldn’t happen again, but I now don’t trust you, Skype.

I don’t trust you for this, nor for the battle I’ve fought for months thinking I had some virus disguised as a Skype toolbar or functionality as it came with the softage.ru URL in the error report. Why the hell you would have anything with a Russian extension on the domain name or function is beyond me, but I got the error every time I started Firefox:

Error: Components,classes(@softage.ru/skype/skypeF

And I’m not alone in the suffering of the softage.ru error.

Please fix this immediately and offer up a sensible fix for the rest of us still struggling with this.

Here is what I’m specifically asking for.

1. Please provide an option for installing Skype’s Plugins and toolbars to my browsers. This used to be an option and it is now gone. Put it back.
2. Don’t make installation a long and tedious affair unless you give us fair warning like providing the size of the download file or a time estimate based upon bandwidth options.
3. Do not assume I’m using Internet Explorer or any browser. Let my system handle which browser to showcase your promotional crap.
4. Don’t spam windows for any reason, no matter how good your sale or discount or deal is. Email us or put it in the Skype app.
5. Don’t use suspicious file names or error codes that make us waste our time thinking we’ve had our computers hacked.
6. Don’t make us work so hard to enjoy and use your service. While most use it for free, many of us pay for the privilege. We deserve your respect.

Please stop crashing my browsers, Skype.

Are you listening? We aren’t going to take this crap any more.

Lorelle
The Tech Nag

Dear Browsers, Stop the Browser Hacks, Please.

Dear Browsers (and I’m talking to all of you):

I’m reading Paul Irish’s article on the Browser Market Pollution and it makes me ill.

As a web designer and developer, I hate when I have to create a new framework or revisit a current one and deal with browser hacks.

I’ve dealt with browser hacks going back to versions no one on the planet is using any more, even those prior to IE 6. I had hacks for Netscape, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, and so on. I even have hacks for current versions of IE7, IE8, and even IE9.

Oh, you other browsers, Safari, Opera, Firefox, I’ve had hacks for your versions as well, so don’t think you are getting out of this nag.

Irish explains that even as we go forward, the browser industry’s failure to maintain web standards and ridiculous need for proprietary crap that messes with web design, causing even more hacks, will continue and web designers will have to maintain multiple hacks and custom support for multiple browser versions on and on and on into the future.

I’m so tired of coverying your asses with my designs and fixing the designs by others for clients.

When Tim Berners-Lee and his team developed the web as we know it, the goal was to break down the code barriers that stopped the easy exchange of data and information so we could all communicate together. Browser hacks put burdens upon that tenuous web when you all should be reinforcing it with strength.

Please let us stop fixing your problems with browser hacks.

Thank you,

Lorelle
The Tech Nag