Most blockers use a time scheme for determining when a pop should be loaded. A very short timer is started when a link is clicked, and if a pop is triggered before the timer is up it gets displayed. This methodology causes all sorts of problems with slow computers. In addition, any function that delays execution of the pop script (even if it is within the timer) will reset the timer. Ie, SetTimeout with a value of 1 ms.
It’s also been my experience that Google just gets confused and starts blocking all pops until the browser is restarted. I thought this may have been just a local occurance as I haven’t heard it elsewhere.
That page doesn’t list any alternatives. Fact is popups/unders are one of the most effective online advertising methods. Compared to other methods of advertisements, like TV/radio where about twenty minutes of every hour is advertisements, or billboards, popups are nothing. That page’s author should have asked how annoyed “visitors” would be by having to pay per page, or a subscription. Or if webmasters are annoyed that visitors that are freeloaders and have to pay for expenses to create, maintain, and host the web pages. As for blockers, the ads companies are fighting back and using code that uses layers.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a popup div that doesn’t get in the way of the content you’re trying to see. All these popup blockers are just causing advertisers to use additional methods.
THe problem is that people who really want to serve ads can see those ads as content (especially if they can charge for it)… so whatever mean you can find to deliver your content can be used to deliver Ads…
as other people said… provide alternative means to do it… write up taht your site needs pop-ups to work so the visitors of your site can allow your site to pop-up
What I meant is that some div ads show up quickly and you can discard them quickly… I’m not ok but I can live with that… those I can’t (and I’m not only talking ads here) … is those divs that shows quickly… move around to make the content nice looking, but completely unusable… and that you can’t discard away so you got to suffer until they are done to do something.
Well I’m having the opposite problem. I have a client using “Microsoft Windows XP, Home Edition, Version 2002, Service Pack 2” and she’s allowed her domain to be unblocked, turned OFF the ad blocking, even turned off the firewall…still nothing. She’s using Norton Internet Security with Ad Blocking…but I think the problem must lie in the WinXP SP2.
Is there some type of firewall/ad blocking enabled that she isn’t seeing to turn off?
I get real disgusted with people saying popups are bad. I don’t visit places where popups are a problem to start. And I’m not using a PC to start so I’m not infected by the spy/adware crap either.
I have a simple delete confirmation popup window on a CMS page for my client to delete something from her website. On another website its just a simple popup to a printable coupon. Why is this a problem?
Why does good programming practices have to suffer because of all this other crap going on? onClick, OnChange are not 4 letter words, literally!
Actually I am not sure the “onClick” attribute would be considered a good programming practice, because it is not supported by all browsers. A much more widely supported option is to just put it in the “href” value of the “a” tag, like Redivider has offered code for.
Depending on what you use it for, the javascript: in the href can be worse than onclick. If you want to open a simple popup window onclick, this is better:
<a href="/mypage.html" onclick="var w = window.open(this.href); return (!w);">My page</a>
Then your link wouldn’t work with JS disabled, whereas my first example would (it would just open in the same window; then the user can use the back button to go back to the page they were on before).
Say you’re waiting for a taxi. You wave one down and get in the car. It smells like someone died in the taxi. You get out before the car moves. Do you owe the cabbie anything?
so there is no more popups, then what? whatever we “webmasters” then decide to use for content will just then be exploited, isn’t that what happened with the popups to begin with?
oh so now we decide to use flash to display our content, now people say “don’t make me install a plugin” to view your site. And then flash plugin becomes expolited somehow, and then people ban flash.
no wonder most people still like websites done by middle school kids.
Hum… Sounds like we’re forgetting somebody and something down the road!
Does a store owner have a store for it’s own pleasure or to reach out to people and sell? If the people don’t like how high the shelf are and stop coming to the store; will the store owner say: “it’s my store, I decide how the products are presented… come to my store anyway” or will he change the height of his shelf to accomodate the people.
My point is that we “webmasters” are not desining web sites for the companies what purchase them… we’re desining the website for the people those companies are trying to reach and if the people they’re trying to reach don’t want pop-up or _________ (put the name of the feature here) we should not sell that feature to the company in the first place.
so customer has Netscape 4.7 on Win3.1 and can’t access your basic design elements (like css), do you create dinosaur.html for those customers to view?
so we stop using popups, now…we “webmasters” decide to use layers as a method to display our “content”…a layer opens up for the delete confirmation the function my popup used to serve. Now, the designer down the street trying to sell his porn flicks and big pecker pills decides to use layers (a valid technology) to make his sales since popups are blocked.
Do we now have layer blocking browsers evolve? we lose another valid technology for displaying “content”.
Customers won’t pay a membership fee to access a site that provides a decent service, but they will block the banner ads and popups that make the site available to them in the first place. “Your site provides a valuable service”…but they won’t pay a minimal fee to support the valuable resource…go figure.
I don’t think you can compare pop-ups to any other form of displaying information (or advertising) because advertising has been around since the beginning and will continue to be there. The very nature of pop-ups is what customers don’t like, it’s not the content. Even something as useful as sitepoint’s newsletter pop-up is a turn off primarily because of the fact that it take the control away from the user. I guess what I am saying is that porn banners and buttons etc, are already here but people don’t mind them as much as pop-ups because they are controlable where as pop-ups can be very uncontrollable, it is the nature of the beast to take the focus away from the current window and force the user to see something that maybe the don’t want to see.
The point was not to say all web sites are stores… all web sites are there to reach to people
aa_memon has a point and we face the same problems when desining desktop application. Don’t pop a message in the face of the user unless you really have to… it breaks the flow of actions the person can do within an application and limits them to what YOU want them to do
because they are controllable where as pop-ups can be very uncontrollable
the kind of pop-ups we’re talking about ARE controlled, the user is clicking a link/image button, this isn’t like onLoad/onUnload.
I think the problem with popups isn’t becuase of webmasters using them for content/advertising…I think its due to spyware/adware that attaches to a browser…instead of removing the adware, they block the popups.
So I WOULD want to get around an ad blocker for cases where I’m using a <a href type javascript call… the user IS asking for something, whether it have target=_self or _blank…pretty soon _blank will be banned.