The Annoying Internet Part 1: intellitxt
May 31, 2010
I’m sure many of you have come across this new advertising scheme called intellitxt. Websites that use this advertising have words underlined with double green lines that have an advertisement popup when you move your mouse over the word (see images below). MajorGeeks is a site which uses them and is where I snapped the screens below.
From what I understand, the advertisements are only supposed to pop up when you hold your mouse over the link, not just from moving across it. I don’t categorically dislike advertising. I know that a lot of sites only exist through advertising, including this one. Also, I wouldn’t necessarily mind intellitxt, IF it worked the way it was supposed to. But, having advertisements fly out in front of what you are trying to read simply by moving the cursor across the screen turns sites into minefields, and I think is entirely unacceptable.
Thankfully they can be easily disabled. All you have to do is add the advertiser’s sites to your Restricted Sites list. Alternatively, you can add them to your HOSTS file but that is a bit more complex.
To add them to your Restricted Sites list go into your Tools menu and select Internet Options. Next go to your Security tab, highlight the Resticted Sites icon, then click on the Sites button just below it.
In the input box next to the Add button type in the following
*.intellitxt.com
and click the Add button.
Next put in
*.vibrantmedia.com
and again click the Add button.
Click Closeand then OK.
If you are on a site with intellitxt links, refresh the page (the green arrow button next to your navigation bar up top, or hit your F5 key). The intellitxt links should be gone.
If the intellitxt links are still there, double check your Restricted Site list and make sure the intellitxt and vibrantmedia sites are there and that they are spelled/formatted correctly. Also, there is at least one other company out there doing this type of advertising. I can’t remember their name and my Restricted Sites list has many thousands of entries so I can’t find them. More than likely other companies will start doing this, anyway, so what you want to do if you find a site where these advertisements are still active, is to look for a name on the advertisement. For example, you can see the ads from MajorGeeks had Vibrant’s name in the upper right corner.
Do a google search for the name on the advertisement and you should find a domain name for the company. Use that domain name to insert as a new entry into your Restricted Sites list. Using vibrant as an example, you can see below a google search found www.vibrantmedia.com. So, for whatever company you find, just put an * in front of the domain name and add to the Restricted Sites list (i.e. *.companyname.com).
I am using Internet Explorer 8 but this guide should be useful for earlier versions of Internet Explorer as well (down to IE4 I think). If this is incorrect let me know.
I learned how to do this from a site over on Wikipedia, which has some additional information on intellitxt if you are interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntelliTXT
Also, I really like the MajorGeeks site. Using them as an example was not meant as a negative endorsement. In fact the reason I knew they used intellitxt is because I go there so often!