Argh! Norton is a pain!

For the last few days, I have been battling with my sanity, and losing.

I would create my page, and view it on my pc and it would display fine. I would use Opera, IE, Netscape etc...

Then, I thought I would use my family's PC to have a look, seeing as they are still using a small CRT monitor at 800*600.

The layout etc was fine, but what was puzzling, is that one of my links on my nav menu wouldn't be there!

I thought this may be a bug in my code, so I viewed the source of the page, and to my amazement, the code for the link wasn't even in the source!

It was an image link, so the A tag and inner IMG tag had completely gone.
This weirded me out a bit, and I tried various tests, like putting asterisks * around the A and IMG tags. Sure enough, they would show up on the page, but there would still be no link or image in between them.

This is the kind of annoying stuff that makes me want to scream....

Anyway, a couple of days later without solving the problem, I came across an article on animated gifs.

The missing link on my page in question was infact an animated gif you see. It wasnt a flashy silly animation. It just looked exactly like text. Except, a gentle orange glow surrounds it for a split second, to subliminally entice visitors to click on it. (it's ok, its not an ad link...)

Anyway, after doing a bit of reading, I discovered that Norton Internet Security completely removes any animated gifs from a page! And this is by default.
That seems a bit extreme to me seeing as most gifs are harmless, it's the popups which are annoying.

Oh well, I needed to vent my frustration a bit...

If anyone experiences the same problem in the future, you know why....

 

Norton also blocks most ads by default, too - or at least it used to. That seems a little underhanded to me...

 

I have always used Norton products and never had any problems. If you configure it properly you will be ok.

 

I have been a long-time user of Norton as well, fryman. It doesn't alter the fact that the default configuration blocks ads - it's turned off on my installation ever since I discovered it blocked AdSense on my own sites.

My point was that, while I like and respect the forewall and antivirus components - and the utilities like SpeedDisk for that matter - I'm still surprised that someone hasn't sued Symantec for the ad blocking component. Ads are not a security issue (or at least not typical ads) and blocking them reduces potential revenue for webmasters.

Remember ThirdVoice and SmartTags? Why the outcry about modification of copyrighted content there and rarely a word about ad blockers?

 

Norton isn't made for webmasters, it is made for the average user. Blocking ads will make pages load much faster, so I guess that is why they have it enabled.

 

I agree with you there fryman, the Norton protection is great. True, I can configure it properly, but I can't design a webpage assuming all my visitors have configured their setup properly as well. Therein lies the problem.

 

Exactly my point. I like Norton. I just don't approve of that particular aspect of Norton.

 

Ok, I posted a thread about a week ago about some strange behaviour on my site when tested on a different pc...

Here if you wanna quick read.

Anyway, it seems the problem is worse than I thought....

I figured, ok, I can get around using an animated gif as a link, by using a bit of nifty javascript to change the class of one of my text links, so it looks like the link is gently flashing...

this worked out great on my pc - but I have just tested it on the other pc and again, Norton is killing my site!

It has completely ripped out the whole text link!

There is not an animated gif in sight. In fact, this is the link:

<a class="thinLink" id="about" href="/about/index.htm">About this site!</a>

Code (markup):

As you can see, pretty harmless.

In the body of my html document, I have an onload call to a JS method which sets the class of that link to something else so it looks like it flashes...

Somehow, if you enable Norton ad blocking (which I have learned is switched ON by default!) then it completely removes that link from the source!. There is just a blank space where that link should be!

I am at the end of my tether now, I am not sure how Norton has managed to do this. Could it somehow be "understanding" the javascript code, and realising that the link is involved somehow? I have tried obfuscating the crap out of it, but it doesn't do any good in "confusing" Norton.

Basically, I see no way around this now. Also, I have noticed that many other features of my site no longer work.

I have a drop down menu of URL's which navigates to the selected URL as soon as it is selected. This is done with a harmless onChange event handler, but even that is disabled by Norton...

In fact, there is quite a lot of discussion on the internet about Norton and its stupid tactics of disabling everything it seems fit. Take a read over at:

About.com

Have the rest of you guys tested how your site behaves with Norton's default settings?

Have a look at this example:

http://www.5staraffiliateprograms.com/phillyblocked.html

Apparently, it really messes up a few content management systems, as well as the 2004 version completely stripping AdSense adverts from a page.

Sorry if I seem to be scare mongering, but this is really annoying the heck out of me now, seeing as the majority of internet users have Norton installed these days!

 

Oh yeh, here's another good link:

http://www.dmcphoto.com/Articles/NIS/

 

Yep I wrote the article for About.com and on my 5 Star site a long time ago. It totally sucks! But the good news, as I say at the top of my 5 star article is that I have heard recent versions of Norton are shipping with ad blocking OFF by default. Which is really good news! If people have to purposely turn it on they will notice that lots of content it missing, even logos and navigation links on some sites and probably turn it back off.

Isnt it weird how it strips code right out of your source? Should be illegal.

 

Hey cool!, what a small world!

Yep it's good to hear about Norton 2005 having ad blocking off by default, but I still have a feeling there are a significant number of people who are still using the older version.

How do other webmasters deal with this? Is the solution just to not use any javascript?

 

I totally agree. As I said in your other thread, Sham, I love Norton products in general (I have NAV, Norton Firewall, Norton Systemworks, and Norton Anti-Spam all installed here). I am amazed that there hasn't been more outcry about ad-blocking.

Norton isn't the only culprit, mind you. It's just the one that I had running when I discovered the problem maybe 2 years ago.

 

There have actually been news stories about this topic. Search google for them. Norton actually ERASES the html code for Google Ads and Banner ads from all websites. ERASES THE CODE DIRECTLY! So pages end up looking wrong or are missing columns. Annoying!

 

I have always considered products by Symantecs to be complete and utter garbage. I find no value in their software. Much of it has free alternatives that are not nearly as invasive to your system.

 

I agree - you will never catch me with any symantecs program on my computer...

 

To each his own... I'd say "utter garbage" is a bit strong, myself...

 

I was just skimming this thread, sorry if I missed it but did anyone find the option to disable that from happening?

I recently did an XP install and had a disk to get a trial of Norton free for 60 days, so it's currently running. I didn't notice it doing anything like others are reporting, but do recall it from the past and it could be disabled.

 

Uncheck Ad-blocking in options for either Norton Personal Firewall or Norton AntiVirus.

But if you have other AV, firewall, or anti-spam software running, you may well have to disable the ad blocking feature there too. It's not like Norton is the only culprit.

 

I used to love norton products but when symantecs bought them they got really buggy. I call them garbage because even for free I wouldn't install them and when I get a computer with them built in...I delete them. I find when friends have slow computers and they remove their symantecs products that suddenly their puters are fast again.

I think for firewall there are free products, for virus protection...there are free products as well. For ad blocking there are TONS of free products. Some free products are excellent with very low memory usage and small footprints. I think the symantec stuff glues onto a system and basically hogs resources. Norton Ghost is an OK product but I have found better alternatives (not free unfortunately).

 

I feel that way about McAfee. Never had any real issues with Symantec.