Oh Scrabble, you bastards.
This new advert appears when opening up Facebook Scrabble (the international version).
Gripes:
- Total advert length might be 45 seconds or more
- Sometimes it’s a video advert, sometimes it’s a moronic Flash game or one of those stupid “You have a new message!” mock emails
- Looks like you can’t stop it until there’s only 15 seconds left. After that it seems a Continue button appears
- For videos, once advert has buggered off and the game fully loaded, the player details don’t appear properly. The video advert has stuffed it. Everybody remains “Anyone”
Apparently we weren’t paying the adverts enough attention, now they want to shove it in our faces.
Way to piss off your users.
Looks like I can stop recommending Scrabble on Facebook to people.
You can block the advertisement itself easily enough with AdBlock or a similar eye-sore remover. Unfortunately, that still leaves the annoying javascript shield. You can get the top part of the game to work by blocking the header, so that javascript puts the blocking layer too low, but that doesn’t help much. The best way to fix it, I guess, would be to load the page through a proxy that strips or alters the javascript code. I think that’s possible with some clever coding and reg-exp.-replacement, but I haven’t found the right tools for it, yet. If anyone has found a quick solution, let us know.. :]
Update: easy fix for the delay is possible, too. Use Greasemonkey, make a script specifically for “http://global.fb.gamehouse.com/*” and use this technique:
http://www.squakmt.com/replacing_javascript/index.htm
Just add a replacement function for UpdateTime() that includes HideOverlay(), or just place HideOverlay() so it executes immediately after loading the page. Problem solved.
I have been using facebook scrabble for a couple of months and then yesterday I got this video advert despite the fact I have pop ups blocked and, just like you said, after it cleared all players were anonymous, every time I open it it does it, during a game when I went to another tab and went back, there it was again and I lost the game because I timed out. I am unistalling scrabble despite the fact I love playing it because I find it so frustrating. Why does facebook allow these irritants?
use safari.
theres an app that allows you to block all flash.
you click on the flash that you wish to run, and only that module runs. also stops annoying autoplay videos on the age website. best safari app i ever downloaded.
Apart from blocking Flash and letting the selected module through, another suggestion was a custom hosts file. I’m not clear on whether either would work, since it appears the advert is Flash embedded within the Flash app running the game.