I notice when loading this web-site, and opening pages within this site has gotten slower and slower…One of the reasons might be all the tracking cookies that load before any page opens…I was watching what was being loaded when I surfed this site and every tracking cookie known to exist gets loaded before any “Car Talk” page opens…Come on guys, give us a BREAK!
Have you tried a ‘cleaner’ program? I use ‘ccleaner’ every so often (there’s a free version), seems to help.
They get re-loaded when you open car-talk…
Yeah I use cleaner and blockers etc. too. I have been having a hard time using the site with IE like I normally use. It was so bad I have switched to Firefox for this site. Maybe that’s why. I don’t know. I just don’t know enough about these computers anymore to know what’s going on or how to find out. I just want it to work when I push the button.
You should switch to Firefox (or Chrome - people like that one too) anyway. IE has become terrible, and is horribly insecure as well as under-featured.
It’s a matter of preference, but I hate Chrome. It’s cause all form of interface problems with our other programs at work.
I’m not a Chrome fan myself. I still use Firefox. But Chrome is a bit faster (Firefox has gotten a bit bogged down over the years with features) and so some prefer it.
I use ghostery in firefox, for this page it blocked Doubleclick, google adsense, google adwords conversation, google analytics, rubicon, and scorecard research beacon.
I also use adblock plus, have no idea of how bad it really is, but I’ll take your word for it.
Hi Folks,
Here’s some background FWIW on this topic from our forum provider. We use a few cookies internally on the site, but not for revenue generating or sharing-- more for optimizing site usability, etc.
All Best,
Doug Mayer
- Cookies dont significantly impact website performance at all.
- We don’t use an unusual number of cookies. Also, several non-Vanilla things are likely adding cookies (analytics, and the cars.com toolbox).
- The user’s browser getting slower isn’t related to our service, which is continuously being streamlined and improved. A good first step would be to clear his cookies, cache, etc then exit his browser and open it again. Rebooting may also help.
For IE, under Tools>Internet Options>Privacy one can choose how much cookies will be blocked with the slider.
If you want to continue using IE then install IE 10. I’ve been using it for a couple of months with no problems at all. I also hate Chrome and I only use Firefox as a backup browser.
Doug, I would like to thank you and your group for all the improvements that you and they have made recently. When you first switched to vanilla, I had a lot of trouble posting here. Granted I did have a shall we say disappointing ISP, but I still had a lot of problems posting anything more than three lines long if at all no mater whose computer or ISP I used. Now I am quite happy with the performance at this site.
@missileman - I’ll wait for the final release version of IE10. It’s not yet final.
Say Doug, as long as we’re talking about cookies, could you lengthen the lease on the logon cookie? Having to re-sign in every couple of days is kinda silly.
I recommend you install three extensions on your browser:
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AdBlock - It blocks banner ads and even skips commercials on some videos. However, you will need to disable it to watch videos on abc.com and Hulu.
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FlashBlock - It lets you decide when sites can run Flash. It makes surfing more secure and keeps me from accidentally launching videos at work.
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ScriptSafe - It blocks scripts from running unless you enable them to run. This definitely makes surfing the web safer, but it can be annoying too. It’s kind of like firewall software in that it is a pain in the butt at first, but once you tell it which scripts can run, it doesn’t get in the way of the sites you use most. You’ll notice it when you go to a new site though, but after the first couple weeks, the annoyance is minimal.
Cookies are not usually as dangerous as they used to be made out to be. Usually, they just make things work a little faster. Still, you can block cookies if you want to. It’ll make surfing more cumbersome, but you’ll feel safer.
I also recommend you disable Java ASAP. See this article for details: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/01/14/java_zero_day_exploit_don_t_patch_just_disable_java_in_your_browser.html
If you choose to use Firefox, go to Tools, Options, Privacy and then check “Tell websites I do not want to be tracked”, then choose Firefox " will never remember history", and When using the location bar: Suggest “Nothing” is what I like.
That way when your brother-in-law uses your computer, you don’t have to know what he has been looking at if Firefox is shut down and then restarted.
You must delete Firefox and then reinstall it for all past activities to be gone so as to start from new.
MSE takes care of the other things.
Yup, here they are:
" I use ghostery in firefox, for this page it blocked Doubleclick, google adsense, google adwords conversation, google analytics, rubicon, and scorecard research beacon."
Every time I open Car Talk, the list above loads themselves first…I’ll check out “ghostery”
The cookies they use are for things like keeping track of posts you’ve commented on…how many unread comments in a post…also login informaiton to help logging on faster…things like that. Should not have any performance hit what-so-ever. Cookies in themselves are NOT bad.
Some of the cookies I don’t like are the ones that keep track of any searching you’ve done. The cookies are then used by advertisers to pop up advertising on what’s stored in the cookie.
As for what browser to use…It doesn’t matter. They all can filter out cookies for you if you want. Chrome is a small fast browser that is great for web developers because it has some nice built in debugging tools.
Google Chrome has an “incognito” mode.
You must delete Firefox and then reinstall it for all past activities to be gone so as to start from new.
Where did you hear that??? Sorry total bogus.