No more banners on Pocket PC

[Jason Dunn]

With the help of Jason Patterson from Conduits, we've implemented some code that will stop banner ads from being displayed when you sync with Mazingo, AvantGo, or view the site from Pocket Internet Explorer - I think. I can confirm that the Mazingo banners are gone, don't use AvantGo anymore (can someone check for me?), and while I've had others tell me the banners don't load in Pocket Internet Explorer any more, I still see them on my end. So this is a semi-successful implementation of code. What are you seeing on your devices?<br /><br />This has the side effect of making the mobile versions of this site "unsupported", which is not a good thing for me. But if and when we do come up with a solution for putting ads on the Pocket PC versions, we'll have them fit the screen and be more useful to you.

[Paragon]

I just did a sync on Avantgo..... no banners. Perviously the banner was loading as a black strip with no graghics in it.

Dave

[jwf]

Any news on a mobile version of the discussion groups? The Mazingo 'Full' channel was pretty useless below the first page last time I looked.

[Jason Dunn]

Any news on a mobile version of the discussion groups?

Chris Edwards is working on it (see my previous post ealier today)

[jwf]

Any news on a mobile version of the discussion groups?

Chris Edwards is working on it (see my previous post ealier today)

OK thanks. I'll keep an eye out ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

What about browsing the site live? Does the banner load for you guys? I'm still seeing it here, which makes no sense...

[Dave Beauvais]

Just looked using Pocket IE, and have no banner! Well, not at the top, anyway. (Screenshots: Top of page (http://www.beauvais1.com/images/ppc/ppct_top.gif); Bottom of page (http://www.beauvais1.com/images/ppc/ppct_bottom.gif)) Finally, I can view the site on my Pocket PC without a horizontal scrollbar taking up valuable screen real estate! To be honest, I've never even looked at -- let alone clicked on -- a banner ad when viewing the site on my Pocket PC. Because of the location of your top banner -- to the right of your logo -- I couldn't even see it unless I scrolled over to the right, which I never did. And I can't remember the last time I actually scrolled to the bottom of the page to see the other ads. (Sorry!) Besides, the pages the banners link to are almost certainly a pain to view on a PPC.

Pocket PC Thoughts is one of the first pages I go to on my Pocket PC each day, so it's great to see that you're trying to make the experience nicer for us! Thank you! If the banners are formatted in such a way that they fit on the screen without having to scroll horizontally, I'll be much more likely to look at 'em. (I'm also more than happy to donate a few dollars to the cause if it would help defray the cost of lost advertising revenue. Got a PayPal (http://www.paypal.com/) account?)

Incidentally, would it be possible to add the HTML meta tag that enables ClearType support in PIE? &lt;meta http-equiv="ClearType" content="true"> I think it makes pages much nicer to read at small point sizes, and in my tests doesn't affect page load time much at all.

--Dave

[Jason Dunn]

I'm also more than happy to donate a few dollars to the cause if it would help defray the cost of lost advertising revenue.

Sure, always happy to accept donations. :-) PayPal the money to [email protected]

Incidentally, would it be possible to add the HTML meta tag that enables ClearType support in PIE?

When I did that, everyone who used Jimmy Landscape or any of the other resolution-enhancing programs based on ClearType tricks couldn't use the site because two doses of ClearType created complete mud. Most Pocket PC 2002 devices have system-wide ClearType, so I don't think this tag would get much use. Besides, Mazingo has ClearType on it already. :-)

[Dave Beauvais]

... Most Pocket PC 2002 devices have system-wide ClearType, so I don't think this tag would get much use. ...
Mostly system-wide. I've got ClearType turned on in my E-200's settings, but there are still many things that don't use it. The most notable of these being the Today screen and Pocket IE. I guess there's a Registry setting that can be changed to turn ClearType on everywhere. I may try to track that down and give it a shot. But this is getting off-topic.

Dave