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I just need to rant -- these little buggers are spreading like c0ckroaches. Over the last few weeks I'm even getting hit from sites that I used to find respectable.
I know that the idea is to get around people killing pop-up ads before they load. Well, I have a message for the advertisers -- I still close the danged thing the minute I see it on my toolbar. And then I realize that I had to wait longer to see my page while the (often slow) ad server pushed that message at me.
I'm rapidly building up enough animosity to hold it against the advertiser for a long time. At least with the rapidly-killed pop-up I didn't know who was advertising, so I didn't have a target for my wrath. Now I know who NOT to buy from.
When are people going to realize that the web is not effective as a push medium? Yes, web advertising needs a boost. This is not the answer.
As for "push" I haven't seen that term used in the context of the Internet in years ;) Brings back memories.
For instance, one of my clients maintains extensive calendars about world-wide events that range from free through various fee structures. They use small pop-ups for the registration details, which appear when a visitor clicks on a small "details" link. The full calendar remains accessible, and it's very easy for a visitor to locate and compare different events.
Before they went to this feature, the listings were much more cluttered, and therefore harder to scan.
However, I can't see a single good use for a pop-under. Wasn't it you tedster, who compared them to a burglar sneaking in through your basement? LOL...
I'd like to see a browser setting that would ban only "onLoad" pop-ups, or pop-ups which contained content from a third party domain (ie: an ad server) or something more specific like that.
How many here have actually signed up for a newsletter that has popped up "on load" the second you went to the page??..or the second you left the page??
NOT! .. sooooo annoying.
Those really get to me ... want to smash my puter screen to zap it away as quick as possible.
We should all just be allowed to "click" if we wish to see something.
There really are very legitimate uses for pop ups. I haven't seen too many used well though.
What if instead of opening a new window if you used dhtml to manipulate layer visibility instead?
I just went to a site that actually opened a pop-under for another site. It wasn't an ad for the site, it was their entire home page!
No, this wasn't an "@dult" site, it was a tech site featuring WinNT news, and the pop-under was an auction site. The original tech site load was held up for 30 seconds while the pop-under loaded.
What are they thinking?
For ex, YES to:
- Pop Ups with more "requested" info (opt-in)
- Marketing promos: special promos & benefits of site
- Privacy Policy
- Newsletter sign ups
No to:
- Pop Under windows
- Popups that sit in the task bar
- Pop ups of index pages to another site
Any others?
There is a quiet war going on now between in some groups due to the popups. Like Opera, they are trying to do everything they can to meet web standards and be certified by the W3C and other orgs. Yet it is clear that users simply don't want these things.
This war between users, usability, and standards is really heating up. Another sore spot was Opera changed the mouse behavior in Opera 5. In the previous releases dating back to its initial release, Opera operated links on the Mouse Down keypress. Now it works on Mouse Up - after years and years of usage - it is a nightmare, and the main reason I don't use Opera 5. Yet Opera had to do it to become compliant with web standard/html 4.
As for standards compliance, I don't see it as a huge issue. It seems like the way to go is to support the specs by default and offer the user a clear way to disable things they hate. Security dialogs with "don't ask me this again" options are a big help here, since many users never find an Edit ¦ Preferences menu item.
No to:
-anything that opens when you leave a page/site
-any pop-unders
-any re-spawning onClose tricks
-pretty much anything else that pops up or loads without me asking it to
The thing is, many magazines and TV shows are essentially all commercial content, and they prove that people will opt in if you do it well. The abuse of pop-ups, interstitials (a horrid idea, IMO), etc, is a lazy approach to marketing. It has no long term future.
The principle is clear.
Anything that is delivered without being asked for, or that could not be reasonably expected as a result of clicking on a link from its description, is spam.
In the end consumers will vote with their clicks. I for one very rarely go back to any site that delivers unwanted surprises.
I was just reading a post elsewhere that reviewed their site's results with agressive pop-ups. According to this webmaster, their return traffic fell 40% during the days they ran the PU's while their new-to-the-site visitors continued to rise which confirmed that the site itself wasn't experiencing any other problems that could be attributed to the decline in returns.
For the next several months, PU's will remain a mainstay of 'screw the user' sites which do not court repeat traffic but attempt to squeeze every click out of anyone who happens upon the site. For major, branded advertisers, I believe they'll move on to the new ad sizes and abandon interstitials.
:)
Also, Joe Burns had a really good opinion in this last week's newsletter. I'd actually like to reprint it here, but I don't want copyright problems.
-G
It's a new window that is programmed to immediately lose focus, so it is buried in the stack of other windows the user has open.
The idea here is like a stealth attack. Because the window isn't visible, it's not nearly as likely to get closed before the document downloads. The user may not even know it's there, and by they time they view the window, it's no longer easy to even associate it with the site that opened it.
Apparently, people who HATE pop up windows, spend too much time surfing p*rn! And as a result of searching too much p*rn become even more frustrated by pop-ups!
Of course I don't surf p*rn so I don't have this problem!
Personally, if I ran a p*rn site, I think I'd be rich... it'd be one of maybe 10 p*rn sites on the internet with NO pop-ups.
...and I thought Excite was bad.
Makes it hard to tell which site used the pop-under, because you may have surfed through 10 sites or so before closing the top window... and the pop-under was just sitting there waiting for you.
I think a few banners..are the right thing to do... even junk email has its place ... but popups need to get a filter attribute added to the them to sort out spam ads and site content.
