The Denim And Daniel Webster
By Carrington Vanston // 2004 Dec 09
The most invasive and annoying internet ad I have ever seen came from Diesel Jeans. It was on the Hint Magazine site, which is full of bad code and reader-hating practices. Clearly Hint needs a clue, and Diesel needs a zipper accident.
I link to neither site because I blame them both. But while I won't link to them, I will add them to the list of nefarious companies that don't get to have my money. Other list members include censorious bookmonger Chapters-Indigo, notorious spammonger Priceline, and vainglorious crapmonger Wal-Mart.
Oh, and Cher. She knows why.
The Diesel ad was an image of a dead bird oozing its own intestines. This supposedly is a good way to sell jeans:
The dead bird image I could live with. Frankly, many of Diesel's former campaigns were more offensive than this gutted bird ad. (e.g. the "Big Titted Party Girl Bottle-Blonds Will Fuck You If You Wear Diesel Jeans" campaign from 1999, and last year's "It's Cool To Look Uncool, Provided You're Actually Cool And Just Wearing This Crap Ironically" campaign.)
But just like the label whores themselves who go truffling for currently hip brand names, it wasn't the image of the ad but rather its nature that offended me.
What grabbed my goat by his good bits was the fact that it was a full-screen animation that floated over the whole window, stalling my browser until a close box slowly wafted into view. In a word, it was ignorant.
This was not a pop-up in the traditional sense. Spamvertisers are finding their pop-ups increasingly ignored due to the prevalence of pop-up blockers and better browsers like Firefox, so the new trend is toward floating content inside the main window itself.
It floated over the whole window, stalling my browser until a close box slowly wafted into view. In a word, it was ignorant.
Normally I'm immune to such nonsense because I rarely keep the Flash plug-in enabled, or else I use FireFox's "Flashblock" extension. Flash is generally used for only three things: invasive advertisements, puerile animations, and invasively puerile animated advertisements.
Alas, today I had Flash enabled when I landed at the Hint site. What ensued can only be described as a browser hijack. A big "bend my browser over the table and say hello prison style" from Warden Diesel and Screw-on-the-take Hint Magazine.
I disabled Flash and returned to the Hint site so I could look over the code for the Diesel ad, with thoughts of perhaps writing a Firefox extension that wipes both Diesel and Hint from the face of the net as far as my own browser is concerned. But without Flash the Hint site was if anything even more useless:
The Javascript code that opens the ad doesn't first check to see if Flash is available, it just grabs the full screen and leaves it up to my browser to display a big blank "get the plug-in, sucker" link. The Hint site is hidden away underneath, unreachable. That's awesome web design, kids.
Let's look at the Hint site's code and see what it reveals about the mag's mentality, shall we? Yes, I think we shall. Visiting the site with both Flash and Javascript happily disabled, a quick click on the "view source" menu reveals a site comprised of nonstandard HTML, riddled with Javascript nonsense, and lacking even so much as a doctype declaration.
Clearly, somebody needs a visit from the web standards project. Yes, a nice long visit. With clubs.
Here's a list of the Javascript functions that appear at the top of the Hint Magazine home page, in order:
- popUpCentered
- popUpEmail
- popUpRegistration
- popUpProfile
- popUpSlideShowCollections
- popUpSlideShowSize
- popUpSlideShow
- popUpPoll
- poppedUpAd
- popUpFlash
- popUpFlashnew
See a pattern there at all? Take your time, it's subtle. I'll give you a hint: look for the word popUp.
Shame on you, Diesel, for creating such an ad. Shame on you, Hint Magazine, for enabling it. You've both made The List. I wish your companies bankruptcy, your customers an increased awareness of your manipulative shallowness, and your board members syphilis. In whatever order is most uncomfortable.
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Carrington Vanston is a humorist and atheist. Or vice versa. He wrote and directed the long forthcoming feature film Duck Duck Goose. He has written two tiny plays which had two tiny productions: The Sound Of Two Hands Typing and Stark Raving Happy. He speaks three languages fluently, but two of them are English with a silly accent. The third is English with a slightly less silly accent. He can pronounce his full name backwards, he has a favorite mathematical equation, and he wants that $2 you owe him. Carrington should be stored in a cool, dry place, and may explode if heated.