Boycott Popups! Among the most irritating things in the daily life of computer users is the popup advertisement, often for companies of dubious honesty. Altho Internet service providers have endeavored to block popups, clever but disreputable programmers have found ways around such blockers, tho a struggle between blocker and popup may explain the freeze we sometimes experience between the time we click on a website and the time a popup appears, during which we can do nothing but wait — and wait. What's the poor websurfer to do?
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One thing you can do is resolve NEVER to click on a popup to go to the site advertised — ever! Not ever! I don't care if it is the most intriguing thing you have ever seen. Do not ever click on a popup except to close it.
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The second thing you can do is complain to the webmaster of any website or president of any company that employs popups. Tell them that you find this intrusion offensive, especially in the case of popups that freeze your machine even momentarily. Tell them that you will stop going to their website altogether, or boycott their products or services for as long as they display popups.
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The third thing you can do is make note of the URL of any website you go to that successfully displays a popup despite your ISP's or browsers popup-blocking software, and tell the managers of your ISP or software that that website has somehow evaded their blocker, and you want them to find a way successfully to block those popups. They need to investigate how popups now evade their attempts to stop them, and improve their software.
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The last suggestion I have today is that if you happen to see, in a popup you can't avoid, a company you actually deal with — that is, if you are a customer of XYZ Corp. and you see that XYZ is advertising by means of popups — contact the advertiser and say you are presently a customer but are so offended that you are will be looking at their competitors because you do not want to do business with any company that attacks websurfers.
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If you have other suggestions, let me know and I will pass them along to readers of this site.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,450.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:00 PM