2/27/2010

How to Easily Disable Drudge Report's Excessive Automatic Page Refresh Feature

If you visit the Drudge Report often, you have probably noticed an extremely annoying feature on the site: excessive automatic page refreshing. At some point, some psychotic decision maker at the Drudge Report decided the main page needs to be refreshed every three minutes. It is hard to imagine the news cycle has gotten so hectic that we must be immediately updated on the events of the last three minutes. Can't we wait a full five minutes to find out Barack Obama once gave a speech about the benefits of selling the Washington Monument to China?

The reality of the situation is probably the Drudge Report is just trying to boost their advertising impressions or pump up a page hit count. The sad thing is you are the victim of this annoying profit-generating, prestige-inflating feature. Isn't it annoying when you are just about to click on a sensationalized headline to find out just how much it is misrepresenting the actual content of the linked article and the Drudge Report suddenly auto-refreshes on you? Don't you hate having to wait for the page to reload so you can search for your selection again?

Well, here's how you can stop this irritating nonsense from the Drudge Report:
  1. Open the http://www.drudgereport.com in your browser.
  2. Click on Tools | Internet Options.
  3. The Internet Options screen will appear.
  4. Click on the Security tab.
  5. Click on the Restricted sites icon from the Select a zone to view or change security settings field.
  6. Click on the Sites button.
  7. The Restricted sites screen will appear.
  8. Make sure http://www.drudgereport.com appears in the Add this website to the zone field.
  9. Click the Add button to add the page to your list of restricted sites in the Websites field.
  10. Click the Close button to save your changes.
Once you have followed these easy steps, you will be free from the Drudge Report's annoying and excessive automatic page refresh feature.

By the way, don't trust those exciting and alarming headlines on the Drudge Report. Take the time to actually read the linked articles and get the full story. You will be amazed how much the content of the articles differ from the headlines on the Drudge Report.