Sunday, March 02, 2003

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Fighting Browser Pop-Ups Pop-up windows, in various guises, are becoming increasingly annoying features, borne out of desperation by web site operators to obtain some kind of income one a web where users expect everything to be free. Even one pop-under window per session (like the New York Times), is bad enough, but many sites hit you every time you go back to the home page, in the same session. The truly evil ones spawn a host of windows the moment you hit the site. There are various programs, such as SurfPal,  which will help combat the problem by suppressing all popped child windows, but they are not perfect. One problem is that there may be legitimate uses of pop-ups, especially in web-based applications. The time-reporting program at my previous employer made extensive use of pop-ups. It took me a bit of puzzling to realize what had changed, the first time I tried to use time-reporting, days after I had installed SurfPal. In fairness to SurfPal, it was configurable, so I could create a "whitelist" of approved sites, which would be allowed to create pop-ups. But there is still the challenge of having a sufficient mental model of what should happen for the user to make the connection between a website or web app not performing, and the effects of pop-up suppression. I suppose a good enhancement would be to create a SysTray icon that lights up when a pop-up is being blocked. Furthermore, it could be configured not to light up in the future for that site. 10:29:49 PM    comment []