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When was the first time you saw a pop-up (or pop-under) ad? It was probably in 2001. You were surfing on one of the main sites at the time and closed all the Internet Explorer windows you had opened, and there it was: a little, lonesome window with an ad for an amazing new "tiny wireless camera" called the X10, beckoning you to click through to the X10 Web site. And click you did.
In May 2001, the X10 Web site was the fifth most-visited site on the Internet. The X10 people laughed all the way to the bank. Several banks. And the Web has never been the same.
Understanding pop-ups
The generic term pop-up ad covers:
- True pop-ups: These ads appear as separate, smaller Internet Explorer windows on top of the Web page you're trying to see. Pop-ups can be timed to appear after you get to the page you want, or they can be triggered by moving your mouse over a hot spot on the main page. Most pop-ups only appear with maximize, minimize and cancel buttons — and some of them don't even have that much!
- Pop-unders: These ads appear underneath the page you're trying to see. Pop-under ads are more common than pop-ups. They don't get in your face. You don't even bump into a pop-under ad until you minimize or exit out of the main page. There's usually a bit of ambiguity about how a pop-under gets there: Any page you've visited could've, uh, deposited it.
- Pop-overs: These ads usually appear when you try to exit a page. They're incredibly obnoxious — you're trying to leave a site, and a pop-over pulls you back in. The best way to get out of a pop-over is to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del, click the Internet Explorer task(s) that's running the pop-over, and click End Task.
A pop-up-inhibiting program has to do four things well:
- It has to stop pop-up ads. That isn't as straightforward as it sounds because Web pages can create other Web pages in many different ways — and some of those ways have nothing to do with pop-up ads.
- It has to make sure not to block pages that you want to see. For example, if you click a link in a Web page that opens a new page, you should see the new page. You don't want a pop-up inhibitor to "protect" you from your own actions.
- It has to tell you unobtrusively that it's holding something back so that you easily see what got blocked. Hey, there is a chance that you really did win $500,000 in the Kazblukistan Lottery.
- It shouldn't crash or freeze your system, no matter what. For example, you may bring up Internet Explorer in a strange way, such as clicking a link from inside a Word document that's attached to an e-mail message.
Doing away with the annoyance by downloading EndPopups
The following short technique puts you back in control of which Internet Explorer windows appear. Download and install EndPopups — a truly remarkable, free program that every IE user should use.
This tiny program (180KB) downloads in no time at all, installs like a dream, and works like a champ. To get it:
1. Start Internet Explorer. Go to EndPopups.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Click Here To Download Directly From EndPopups.com link.
3. When asked, save PopupManager.exe (note the change in name) to a convenient location.
IE downloads the file.
4. Close all Internet Explorer windows.
5. Double-click PopupManager.exe and follow the instructions.
At the end of the installation, EndPopups (also known as the PopupManager) starts IE and goes to a page on the EndPopups Web site. From that point on, EndPopups activates itself every time you start Internet Explorer.
Using EndPopups
When EndPopups is running normally, it puts a small, green, vertical bar called a widget (which is as good a name as any) in the lower-left corner of your browser window.
If EndPopups detects a pop-up, pop-under, or pop-over window, the widget turns red, and EndPopups swallows the pop-up window.
To see EndPopups in action, follow these steps the next time you surf the Web:
1. Surf to your favorite pop-up ad infested site.
If the vertical widget turns red (and it probably will), EndPopups has just intercepted a pop-up ad that tried to infiltrate your computer.
2. Hover your mouse over the red widget.
EndPopups shows you one Internet Explorer icon for each ad that it's swallowed, plus a smiley-face icon.
3. Hover your mouse over the Internet Explorer icon.
EndPopups tells you where the pop-up came from and may provide some description.
4. If you really want to see the pop-up, click the Internet Explorer icon.
EndPopups begrudgingly shows you the ad that it swallowed.
5. Click the Smiley-face icon to make a donation to the author of the program.
He did such a great job with this program, you might think he deserves a few bucks.
Fine-tuning EndPopups
If you have ever visited one of the Microsoft sites (and who hasn't?), you may have seen pop-up ads that ask you to take a survey so that Microsoft can do a better job with its Web site. That kind of gray-area pop-up ad is a pretty common sight if you use the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
You may be the kind of person who wants to participate in those surveys. If so, you need to tell EndPopups to allow pop-up ads on Microsoft's site. Here's how:
1. Start Internet Explorer. Go to any page on www.microsoft.com.
2. Right-click the widget and choose Allow Popups from Microsoft.com.
From that point, while you're on a Microsoft page, any pop-up that appears bypasses EndPopups entirely.
You can do the same thing with any other Web site, if you want to allow pop-ups on that site. Just navigate to the site, right-click the widget and choose Allow Popups From the site.
EndPopups has a few more settings, which you can tweak by right-clicking the widget and choosing Options. EndPopups then activates the Popup Manager properties box.
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