Julia - I'm guessing that one of the targets of your complaint is the "toaster popup animation" of the six little ChoralNet partner ads at the "footer" of each ChoralNet page. If so, every registered ChoralNet user has the ability to permanently disable that animation by a checkbox on their user profile page (which for you is here: http://www.choralnet.org/view/user/9963). Click on the "Edit Profile" button in the upper right-hand corner, scroll to the bottom, un-tick the "Animation on site footer" option and Submit the edit and poof--those (annoying) animations will be disabled each time you're logged into ChoralNet.

Hey David:

 

The "toaster popup animations" were kind of annoying at first, but now I'm used to them and actually don't mind them because they DON'T MOVE once they are up, like toast.  (The newish "Who's Online" list at the right is another questionably useful and distracting thing.)  I was responding more to the current "Songlearning.com" ad that moves (over and over and over) and looks like water when somebody tosses a pebble into a pond (actually the first time the ad appeared when I was here I thought omygosh there is something wrong with my vision--momentarily very scary until I realized it was the ad), and the "Kl Concerts...Performance Tours Worldwide...etc." ad that has, I think, three different incarnations, one after the other, like different pages becoming visible--1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3,....  It is those kinds of moving advertisements that just keep moving and moving that are impossible, at least for me, to ignore and stay focused on what I am trying to read--which is, of course, why there are moving ads anywhere in the first place, to draw our attention to THEM rather than what we wish to pay attention to.  Moving ads probably bring in more revenue than stationary ones, but I hope that the powers-that-be consider the overall effect of adding such distracting ads to an otherwise high-class, PEACEFUL, anti-annoying website.

 

So, thank you for the information about how to disable the "toaster popup animation."  Will doing so disable ALL of the moving ads on the site?  If so, GREAT!

 

Thanks for listening again.  I hope more users will chime in on this issue.  I can't be the only one who feels this way, but perhaps I'm in the minority.

I'm OK with the various animations/changing elements that bother you, Julia, and I'm a ChoralNet volunteer, but my "work area" is the directory of choirs, so I'm not directly involved in the features of the site (other than to do a little informal testing of things). The "Who's online?" feature can give people a sense of community, in that you can see that others are coming and going, rather than the isolation of just viewing a website alone. As other interactive features are added, I'm guessing there will be other opportunities for user-to-user interaction, especially in the Communities.

 

As for the banner ads, you can probably block them using a browser plug-in. For example, people using Firefox can install the free "Adblock Plus" add-on and then, when on ChoralNet, right-mouse-click on the banner ads to add a filter that excludes "||choralnet.org/paint/ad/*" from appearing, and "poof" -- no more banner ads. I don't do this on ChoralNet, but I use it on Facebook for a much more pleasant experience.