Outside advertizing slows down or freezes page load

[storagecraft-gps]

I wish ebay didn't have to load outside advertizing on ebay listing pages.   ebay is a platform for buy/sell transactions and the sites performance should not be compromised by advertizing.  I would hate to miss increasing my bid on an item while I wait for the delivery of some ad in the right margin.   I am an IT professional running a "clean" updated computer.  MSN and TMZ are worse but ebay should not run ads on listing pages.

[berserkerplanet · Accepted solution]

Use Adblock Plus, Adblock, uBlock Origin, or some other adblocker to block specific things, along with the Windows HOSTS file to block ad domains, and this is a total non-issue.

Additionally with you can add element hiding rules to hide other annoyances like "other people were looking at" or "items from other sellers" eBay banners.

I see no ads, eBay suggestions, or anything I don't want to see.

[storagecraft-gps]

The real solution is for ebay to clean up their act !    ebay is a transactions site, not social media or a gossip site.   As a platform that some poeple depend on their living, they should't link external ad delivery systems to their site.  GREEDY !

Or maybe they should get better web developers.  Amazon has sponsored content but it doesn't seem to load from third party servers so it doesn't mess up the performance of the Amazon web site.  

[berserkerplanet]

I know, and I agree with you, but eBay does not, and short of something that gets media traction, a huge lawsuit, demonstrably seriously, damages sales and therefore the money in eBay's pocket and the exec's golden parachutes, I don't expect any changes due to seller or buyer requests or any website glitches fixed before hell freezes over.

Thus my damage control approach and responses. I fix what I can (page redirections, sometimes manual URL massaging, JS bookmarklets, scripts, filters, etc), and it mostly, sort of works.

[johnsonsales-wisconsin]

"Additionally with you can add element hiding rules to hide other annoyances like "other people were looking at" or "items from other sellers" eBay banners."

Can you explain how to do this?  I literally have a headache from the stress of trying to list with the pages loading so slowly and then "jumping all around"  so I end up accidentally clicking on the wrong thing, go to a page I don't want and then have to start over. 

I have doubled my RAM thinking it was my computer that was slow, even though I don't have issues on other sites. No help.

I have taken your suggestion re Adblock Plus.  That was easy.  Thanks so much. 

[berserkerplanet]

>>Can you explain how to do this?

I fear I made it sound too easy. It mostly requires a pretty good understanding of HTML and CSS, or a newer adblocker that can do the dirty work for you when you click on a page element and tell it to hide it or block it.

My methods are based on years of doing it the hard way, and it's impossible to explain all the ways it can be done, or all the steps involved for the various approaches. It isn't really an A,B, C procedure except in the grossest sense (the devil is in the details and syntax)

Also, we are talking about two different things here. Element hiding rules are for getting rid of visual annoyances like those eBay "item suggestion panels" on other item pages. The content is retrieved from the server and loads, but is visually "disappeared".

Adblock Plus blocking rules are for just entirely blocking something like ads or images, and prevents the get requests from even going out to the servers to retrieve the content. (That is how you conserve bandwidth, cpu, and prevent being tracked)

It sounds like you want to block the ads. With something like Adblock Plus, you should be able to right click on the ad, and create a blocking rule for it using the "wizard".

If you can show me a screen shot of something you think needs to go away (and what page it's on) maybe I can provide more direction. (I don't ever see any ads, and it's next to impossible for me to get them to appear without dropping all my armor the way I have things set up - most of the blocking is in the Windows HOSTS file, so I'd need to selectively disable entries to see the problematic ads once I know what they are and where)

[johnsonsales-wisconsin]

I downloaded the AdBlock plus and all the ads went away. It helps but I still have a problem scrolling down on my listings. It is unbearable when trying to relist, sell similar, or such. What I just discovered is that the problem almost completely goes away when I use Explorer instead of Chrome. So apparently there is an extension or something that slows loading. Do you have a clue as to what it might be? I do have tons of extensions, but none that I recall adding just before the problem began.

I realize it is kind of nuts to ask you what I might have on my laptop that is causing the problem, but I thought you migjt have heard of the issue before.

Thank you for your quick response and taking so much time to assist me. I have an understanding of HTML, but just pretty basic. So if there isn't s simple solution, I don't know if I could follow through so I wouldn't ask you to assist me on something that could easily be a waste of your time. But i really appreciate your offer.

Wish there were more like you in the eBay Community.

[berserkerplanet]

Glad to help.

So looks like the default Adblock Plus subscription ruleset whacked a lot of your problem, but as I don't use any of the Adblock Supplies rules (I write all my own), I can't be of much help with what they targeted and what they did not.

I also don't use Chrome, and won't (tried it way back when it was new, hated the browser, but hated Google's snooping more), and can't (Windows XP), so not help much there.

In Firefox, extensions (addons) and plugins can be individually disabled to test out suspicions that they might be causing problems, or the browser can also be started up in a "safe" mode with all addons disabled to really see if something added causes issues, Chrome should have similar functionality, and disabling extensions one by one to see if one of them is the culprit might be worthwhile.


Another note: the fact that IE seems to work better than Chrome in regard to this issue doesn't necessarily point a finger at the Chrome extensions - the code that runs for different browsers can be different. There can be conditional comments in JavaScript scripts that only IE sees and uses to execute alternative code (or eBay servers can serve up different scripts entirely based on detected browser flavor and version.). "Slogging" out problems can often be due to scripts that are executing in an uncontrolled fashion (endless looping that consumes masssive CPU time,etc), and maybe a flaw in non-IE targeted code causes endless loops.


I don't have knowledge of browser behavior like you describe when specifically using Chrome other than nebulous reports in these forums (but, again I'm not conversant in Chrome or its plugins). Wild guess: The current whipping boy for some eBay editing problems is the Grammarly Chrome plugin, which is causing havoc for some with eBay editors in messaging, and possibly elsewhere on eBay. If you are running that one, try disabling it.

[johnsonsales-wisconsin]

Grammarly was my first thought and I disabled. No difference. Other than that, I don't recall any extension additions just prior to the problem beginning. But, of course I should have thought of disabling them one by one to see if there is a culprit. I like Chrome and love Google, but could deal with Microsoft Edge if I could get it to send to my printer. I use an old version of IE and it sends to the printer but it is so old, some places like Pinterest give me a warning about it. So now,, I'm using Chrome for everything other than eBay, using Edge for eBay, but have to go back to Chrome to print shipping labels and packing lists.

Did you say you are using XP? My desktop is running XP and it just sits and gathers dust because I didn't think I could do much with it. I keep it because it has a TV turner and I can record TV programs and it does lightscribe. I figured everything would be so outdated it would be kind of useless. Don't see many programs that will work with it. Maybe I should rethink that. 🙂

[berserkerplanet]

>>Grammarly was my first thought and I disabled. No difference

That was just a shot in the dark.

>>I don't recall any extension additions just prior to the problem beginning.

That doesn't mean they didn't update while you weren't looking or that the browser didn't autoupdate. At least for Firefox, defaulting to addons and the browser auto-updating has been the default for a long time

First thing I do when I install a new browser instance is kill all the auto-updating, and go in the about:config settings and disable all outside URLS and all telemetry so it never changes or phones home. That way I am completely in control (and not being spied on - or at least not as much 🙂

Yes, using XP. I had to do the registry "hack" to get a last series of MS updates after XP was abandoned in order to update the IR core engine to TLS 1.2 security for Turb Lister to continue to work. (as a side effect, I still get security updates when I turn it back on since MS thinks my desktop is a POS terminal which they have in extended support 🙂

About the only other issues I have run into are program updates that dropped support for WinXP. The last Firefox version that can run on XP is FF52 ESR, and it just dropped out of support in June or so (it is a perfectly fine browser that works with all sites on the internet and probably will for quite a while). Chrome quit supporting XP at version 50, IE8 is the last version for XP, etc. I'm not worried about not having "the latest version". I primarily use Firefox 2.0.20 and Firefox 3.6.24 that are a decade old. Typing this in FF31 since these community forums require TLS 1.1 SSL security protocols which 3.6.24 can't do (for no good reason - this isn't banking).

A few other things I bother with dropped supports for XP like the Handbrake Video reauthoring suite - primarily because x265 codecs require Vista or higher which I really don't care about - and I've moved to FFmpeg command line video processing anyway (for memory and overhead reasons.)

XP works fine for me, but I'm not worried about security and "hackerz". I don't run antivirus/antimalware , and I have never been pwned. (not a programmer by trade or training, but have been coding in a dozen languages, disassembling, and reverse engineering code for 40 years, and security issues are a minor hobby, so sort of know the lay of the land).

I don't do any social networking or have any interest in "the cloud" (a great idea in theory but implemented poorly and used for the wrong reasons), so don't need the latest and greatest programs. YMMV.

[johnsonsales-wisconsin]

Thank you so much for that information. I will ask my grandson to "translate" for me and I should be good to go.... back to using my desktop with XP. 🙂

[berserkerplanet]

Certainly 🙂

>>to update the IR core engine to TLS 1.2 security for Turb Lister to continue to work.
in my previous post that should read "to update the IE core engine to TLS 1.2 security for Turbo Lister to continue to work."

Still using XP isn't all rainbows and unicorns, but is doable if you don't need the "latest apps", and are aware of and willing to take the risks (however small I personally consider them to be) of using an abandoned OS no longer receiving full security updates (or possibly any more updates for that matter - I haven't checked since early Sept 2018)