Mark

The term floats is a little confusing, especially when dealing with CSS because of the float property.

I highly recommend using the combination of DNSKong and eDexter. The former is a lightweight DNS proxy which resolves ad-serving domains (with user-editable filters, wildcards and so on) to 127.0.0.1, the latter is a very small web server which pumps out transparent 1×1-pixel GIFs. So eg., servedby.advertising.com resolves to 127.0.0.1 and requests go there rather than the actual host, custom JS and GIFs can be returned to prevent render errors etc.

Not only do I feel like I browse faster, it’s much more free of ads and cookies. ;)

http://www.pyrenean.com/

[style]
#ad
{
display:block;
position:absolute;
top:20px; left:300px;
width:200px; height:200px;
border:solid 1px red;
background-color:blue;
color:white;
}
#ad:visited { display:none; }
[/style]

[a href="randomlink.html" id="ad" target="closead"]
Vlaqra
[form action="buy.html" method="get"][input type="submit" value="buy" /][/form]
[iframe name="closead" src="about:blank"][/iframe]
[/a]

Took 2 minutes to invent/build/test.

Now you need to turn off CSS to avoid floating ads.

This sort of advertisement, tricking customers into thinking it’s not one, should be regarded false in every media. Just like the little “sponsored ad” comment in newspapers.

I’m worried that these new spawns of bad advertising will prompt more and more users into something that is already dreaded by most reading this site: “The javascript-disabled browser”. Don’t deny it, even if you’re building accessibility and scalability we’re all secretly wishing for the day when Javascript covers 100% of the user base.

An alternative that used to work was using platypus to create greasemonkey scripts to get rid of these in individual sites. Now advertisers have caught on this and randomize element names and functions so it’s harder to catch.