Are pop-up windows dead? Are there alternative methods?

programming web dev
1

hi!

ive started encountering problems with developing sites with pop-up windows. These pop-up windows are not for ads, theyre for picture galleries or to other html windows…etc. Ive gotten calls from 2 clients saying b/c they installed or their friends have installed pop-up blockers they cant see part of their site. Does any one know how to get through pop-up blockers,
are pop-up windows dead or are there alternative methods?

any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

thanks,
jana

2

paradoxical ain’t it? Popups used to be such a problem/pain when everyone and their mothers used them. Now that more and more users are installing toolbars and software that block malicious and annoying popup windows/ads, the sight of popups are increasingly depleting. But the software that blocks unwanted windows also unintentionally blocks windows that may be a neccessary to the functionality of a website. Such as those that use ‘Pop-Unders’ to process the users’ server requests. If this has never been an issue to you, then you don’t use the window.open method to open windows in any of your websites. Since you shouldn’t have to open any windows without proper user interaction anyway. Regardless, we shall all have to face this dilemma at one point or another (Windows XP SP2, namely). One solution I’ve seen is to Warn/Instruct the user that popups must me enabled for them to accurately view your website. Simple right? Well, not all users know how to turn their Popup Blockers off (even temporarily), different software behaves differently and shuts off differently, in addition users may have multiple popup blocking agents running simultaneously. Another solution I’ve seen is to Detect that the user is using a popup blocker–using simple javascript (google). What I suggest: anything mission-critical should be fixed from window.open method to another. Why? The method, window.open, is going buh-bye. Yes, that’s right. After the implementation of SP2, window.open is no long functional. Great, huh? Same with flash, any windows you want to open that use the method window.open, aren’t going to work.

well, that was my 2.5 cents.