By Sandor Panton, Contributor
FOR THOSE who've literally surfed to the end of the Internet and back several times already, the experience remains an interesting one. The web continues to evolve as a medium that constantly changes, with a growing list of obstacles and annoyances. For newcomers to the worldwide web, if you haven't experienced these and other Internet annoyances detailed below, be warned.
GATOR
Gator is one of the most common and despised pieces of Spyware that you may encounter in your day-to-day browsing on the Web. It's usually installed via free software that you can download off the Web, or alternately it can be installed if you said 'Yes' to a fairly innocent-looking pop-up installation window that you may have seen while surfing certain sites that advertise for Gator. What's so bad about Gator? Among other things, it hijacks your browser and displays ads when you visit specific web sites, it launches pop-ups and it also collects user habits and other information that should be confidential and collected only with prior permission.
RESIZED BROWSERS
Some web site designers, especially those who use Macromedia Flash extensively, seem to have a tendency to create sites that resize browser windows without even a warning to the surfer. It's understandable that some sites look better with the browser window set to a specific size, but you should have the option to say 'No' and not proceed and if the browser is going to be resized.
HOMEPAGE HIJACKS
A common trick used by some site developers, to get traffic to a site, is to snare the start-up/ home page of unsuspecting surfers. Its usually done via a simple script that makes the change (usually without asking your permission), and the unsuspecting Surfer will probably not know that their homepage was reset until they click the home button and end up at some other site instead of their usual homepage URL.
MOUSE TRAILS
If you've never seen them before and you happen to visit a web page that transforms your mouse pointer into a blur of trailing bits, you might think for a minute that its amusing or even 'cool'. After that however, it simply gets more and more annoying to see these flying trails, and for me it then becomes a race to see how quickly I can close the window and exit the site.
BACKGROUND SOUND
Surfing merrily along to a page that suddenly launches music in the background can be annoying, especially if your speaker volume was set to high or if it interrupts other music or audio that you had going at the time. If there is no option on the site to turn it down or off, I usually turn down my speaker volume manually, but as I do that I also tend to make a mental note not to visit this site again, unless I absolutely have to.
There are other annoyances on the Web that I've not covered here including pop-ups, sneaky cookies and numerous other types of Spyware, but those above are definitely among the more common annoyances today.
Sandor Panton is an Internet specialist and consultant. If you have any comments, contact him at feedback@jamaica-gleaner.com. This series is brought to you by www.go-jamaica.com, the portal web site of The Gleaner.
