Why are images on Web pages replaced with "[AD-SIZE]"?

Hi,

This might be that the user has a firewall called Outpost installed. This firewall is made by Agnitum (http://www.agnitum.com) and comes with a plug-in for blocking ads.

The default option is to block ad's replacing them with the text [AD-SIZE] if my memory serves me correctly. It's nothing to worry about. All it is doing is simply blocking ads.

Hello,

This reminds me of a problem I had with red "x"s replacing ads on certain web pages - which turned out to be a problem with my HOSTS file.

Certain IP addresses were being apparently being blocked, and deleteing the HOSTS file (or all the entries in it) solved the problem.

What you experienced, Monty, is a standard Web browser technique of showing when a graphic can't be loaded. Interestingly, the specific image shown when the graphic image fails to load is different in different browsers, too. You can see for yourself: save the following few lines as "badimage.html" then open it in your favorite Web browser:

<img src="badimage.jpg"><br />
[failed to load image]

On Firefox, for example, it's shown as a little grey piece of paper with a few tiny graphical elements, 'torn' to show it's broken. Apple's Safari browser shows it as a small blue box with a white question mark.

What is really strange is that this page cannot be displayed by Firefox (1.0.1) although it displays perfectly well in IE.

When nothing happened when I tried to go to the page by clicking the link, I tried it again with IE. No problem. Then I copied the URL and pasted it into Firefox. Nothing happened. The blank page just kept staring at me. Firefox didn't even try to download the page.

WTF????????????

Just to clarify the previous comment, by "this page," I am refering to this Ask Dave Taylor page, not to the page that is the subject of the original question.

Ken, the Ask Dave Taylor page looks the same to me whether I'm using FireFox 1.01 or IE 6.0.2900

Ken, that's just plain weird. I check out my site in various browsers and everything looks just hunky-dory to me. But then again, I also have sporadic reports that "someone else is claiming ownership of my site and has their name in the top banner", so maybe there are just gremlins at work on the net? Seriously, what OS are you running, what version of patches, what anti-virus, spyware, pop-upware, etc etc?

Hello,

I had thesame problem after installing the Novell Firewall. You can solve this by adjusting this firewall: click options > plugins
select ads
click settings
click the image size tab
Uncheck enable blocking by image size

Restart your pc and the problem is solved. Grx Robert

I have Firefox 1.0.4 running on XP running Outpost with the BlockPost plugin,
and SpyBot's TeaTimer sitting in the background too.
Comments on other web sites suggest either Outpost and/or Blockpost or TeaTimer is the problem.

Don't know the source, but here's a solution:
Clearing the web-cache worked for me, replacing [AD-SIZE] with the intended graphic,
OR
Hit Ctrl-F5, since it reloads everything without going via the web cache (no need to clear the cache then),
but the latter didn't work when trying to reload a frame within a webpage.
I had to view the frame as a separate web page and then Ctrl-F5 worked.

HTH.

Had same issue. I used Outpost firewall but had uninstalled it and problem still remained.

I had to manually search the registery and delete all keys containing Outpost and Agnitum.

Regcleaner may work as well. The free version can still be found here.
http://www.worldstart.com/weekly-download/archives/reg-cleaner4.3.htm

I just came by to find out what was going on with the [AD-SIZE] thing I was seeing.

Well I suspected it was Outpost. I recently installed it.

Thanks for starting this thread...

OK, here's how I fixed this without de-installing Outpost.

Open/Maximize Outpost.

From the menu go Options > General, and then Plug ins. On this tab you'll see a list of plug ins and the first one is called Ads.

Select this row.

Press the Stop button on the right. Ads will say "Stopped"

And your web images will work as normal again.

(Cntrl + F5 as mentioned above didn't work for me).

(Anyone have any problems with those sums used to verify posting? My brain's rusty. LOL.)

Hi!

Yep, it's OUTPOST FIREWALL causing the problem. Just disable the Ad block plug-in and it will be gone.

Later Dude

This has been the most helpful thread i have ever come across thanks guys.

Thanks for this answer! I was getting annoyed because I couldn't figure out what was causing this problem, it was the Agnitum outpost firewall. Its strange becuase even after exiting the firewall completely the images would still get blocked which is why I had discounted it as a possibility for being the culprit. The fix works like a charm of disabling the block ads plugin.

It's not even necessary to disable the adblock plugin in Agnitum Outpost to have your browser show these graphic elements. Simply turn off the blocking of images by size in the adblock plugin. You can perfectly well have the other means of ad blocking still work.