Incredibly annoying. I have a quad core machine, 16GB RAM, SSD, 100Mbit broadband yet it takes 14 seconds for TechCrunch to fully load due to the Post Up widget they use. Once it loads the page scrolling is not smooth at all. It definitely makes me less likely to visit.
I just adblock that shit. I know I should just not visit their site or whatever, but if everything I wanted to read had to live up to my standards, there would be nothing to read.
(Incidentally, my own blog didn't live up to my own standards, and it's down pending me fixing that :)
This is my primary reason for running adblock. I can't tell you how many clients have e-mailed me saying 'My site is down!' or 'My site takes a few minutes to load', even though the site loads in about a second in Safari. When I switch over to my (un-extended) Firefox install, I suddenly see the problem - literally dozens of Javascripts, image requests, tracking pixels, and other junk.
It's ridiculous. At one company we had a client who spent the last year contracting us to add widgets and pixels and add-ons and buttons and everything, until suddenly they found out that Google would be factoring in page load times into their search results. Suddenly it was a rock and a hard place - do they keep adding content without any proof of its value? But that would hurt their search rankings - but but but, it adds value! It encourages engagement!
It's ridiculous. They didn't even have any metrics showing that any of the stuff they were adding was helping, or even being used. Likewise with the search widgets. People are told that these things will 'drive user engagement' and 'encourage social interaction', so they throw it in and assume that it's made their site better.
