Ignore offline adservers

Ignore offline adservers

Hello,

I tried to search the forums but couldn't find anything regarding this problem.

Sometimes I go to sites that include ad banners which are hostet on other servers. And sometimes, these servers don't respond.
The status bar of opera just says sth. like "Connecting to remote host ad.server.net". This can last as long as the server doesn't respond.
Is there a built in feature to tell opera to ignore that part of the site and to simply load the rest of it?


greets

Originally posted by vokuhila:

Is there a built in feature to tell opera to ignore that part of the site and to simply load the rest of it?

Not that I know of. Please report this problem at Opera's Bug Tracking system and post the bug number (without the email address part) here.

I'm not sure this is a bug. If the browser finds, in the middle of some HTML page, a script that has some "document.write()" inside of it, it has to process that script before parsing the remaining HTML content. If the script doesn't load, what should the browser do? Maybe, after getting a server timeout, the browser should throw an error and continue.
BTW, it is mainly a web publisher problem, not a browser bug, IMO. It is bad idea to get ads this way.

Originally posted by barulheira:

If the script doesn't load, what should the browser do? Maybe, after getting a server timeout, the browser should throw an error and continue.

NO, NOT WAIT for said SERVER timeout, instead establish a BROWSER timeout by some watch-dog routine with customizable settings, and then continue ...

M/B additionally insert some small hint into the page, other browsers take small red cross marks (x-icons) for that, for example.
As an indicator that something is missing there, even with additional possible tooltips.

According to standards (should I look at them now?) an in-line script must be processed in order to continue parsing the HTML, unless there is a "defer" hint. So, how should the browser guess how much time it must stay waiting the script to download? It must receive a timeout. Ads scripts containing "document.write()" must be completely run inline before the remaining content can be displayed.

Originally posted by barulheira:

According to standards (should I look at them now?) an in-line script must be processed in order to continue parsing the HTML, unless there is a "defer" hint.

Usability rules!

And if there is NONE, and no SERVER response ever ...
What about such a never ending wait, manually press ESC, please NO!

Opera should have the option to set a timeout.
Also, regarding the OP, you may add server urls to filter.ini to prevent Opera fro ever trying to connect to those servers.
See section "Using the Built-in URL Filter"
http://nontroppo.org/wiki/BlockAdvertisements

That's not a bug.

Originally posted by xErath:

That's not a bug.

Thanks, xErath!

I don't think Opera can tell ad servers apart from any other...

Originally posted by barulheira:

Originally posted by xErath:

That's not a bug.

Thanks, xErath!

Can we live with the following?

It's NO bug with respect to standards, M/B - but with respect to usability, I personally would speak of a buggy behavior.

Imagine, you open some URL - inter alia - in background for later use.
Then you are working through your different tabs and at a sudden you arrive at a half loaded page waiting for something which never came, and this can even be so, repeatedly, multiple times. What a nuisance.

Useless interruption of my work-flow ...

Strictly following the standards and such waiting could have made sense (for whom? I doubt however, for me!) in times of UNTABBED browsing, where that background opening was an exception, but now ...?!

So THE USER has to tell Opera which scripts he wants Opera to skip rules. He can filter URLs. That's OK. Else, if a script takes a long time to load, how will Opera know if the server is down or if it is correct behavior by some heavy application at the server's side that is worth waiting for (mainly in slow connections)? Maybe, as xErath suggested, it could be an option to set a timeout. So the user will be the master of timeouts. No problem.

Originally posted by haavard:

I don't think Opera can tell ad servers apart from any other...

It does not have to be ad servers. If Opera gets stuck on any server, it usually just gets stuck; period. A timeout and then moving on to the other stuff would be nice -- if nothing else, it will at least free up those network connections for something else.

+1, a timeout would be necessary.

Originally posted by neeraj_deshmukh:

It does not have to be ad servers. If Opera gets stuck on any server, it usually just gets stuck; period. A timeout and then moving on to the other stuff would be nice -- if nothing else, it will at least free up those network connections for something else.

+1

I have recently noticed this on E-Sangha — fortunately, the ad-server has a short time-out and the banner displays an error message instead of the ad.

This is not the case with other sites like PC Pro which can sometimes take a minute or more to load. As I write this, PC Advisor is not loading at all.

Since many ad-servers like ad.double-click are well known, isn't this something that can be configured in filters.ini?

At least, Opera should be able to render the rest of the page while it waits for the server to fulfil requests.

Originally posted by Pesala:

At least, Opera should be able to render the rest of the page while it waits for the server to fulfil requests.

This is not default behavior.
If the browser gets the hint "defer" in the script tag, it can go on rendering the page. Without that hint, Opera cannot know if, a little bit after the script, the page calls a function that (maybe) is inside that script, and so Opera should wait the script finish loading to know if that function really is there, before continuing.
It's not that simple.

Originally posted by barulheira:

so Opera should wait the script finish loading

We understand this. The point is, how long should Opera wait? If the server has no timeout set, should Opera be waiting forever? The request here is to have a timeout enforced from Opera's side as well (possibly optional / user-configurable).

OK. I was talking about default behavior.

Originally posted by barulheira:

It's not that simple.

Agreed!

The more important does become developing a sound and sophisticated strategy for such a timeout solution.

M/B some OPERA users with enough insight into design and operation of
modern web-sites could gather their ideas into another new, specialized thread.