My browsers are set to disallow all popups as they are evil - doubly evil for those of us who can’t afford broadband.
Triply evil are those sites that refuse to load the main content until AFTER the popups are popped - the main offender was that Jim guy filling in for Roger Ebert while Ebert was indisposed for much of this last year.
I don’t know of anyone who likes popups, yet even now and still, legitimate news sites utilize this “feature”. The BBC is popup-free…except for the Big Picture link - but pictures from Saturday’s football action is a normal hotlink. The Times of London and many other news sources (too late and too tired and on too slow of a connection to search just now) use a java pop for “slide shows” of red carpet walks, on-the-spot news photography, or “what happened at last night’s event”.
Is there a legitimate engineering reason for things like this, or are web designers out to personally get me?
Not out to get you. IMO they are justifiable sometimes - for showing multiple, or incidental, sets of information pertinent to the main story, but without you having to leave the main story. Web page real estate is precious - to cram the info in while maintaining a reasonable aesthetic is tough, and to dedicate some of it to a possibly-used function is a waste.
I think the ones you mention (slideshows, etc.) serve their purposes well. Also, you may see ‘legitimate’ use in popping up a “join our mailing list” form or the like. Also the BBC radio player popup provides a service incidental to your regular surfing - if it were to happen in the same page, you’d have to leave that page and open a new one.
A lot of this functionality is being replaced by Ajax now, which people don’t seem to hate so much. But occasionally a popup is worthwhile.
I should add: in my professional web ethics, any such popup should only ever be at the user’s behest, and any link to it should be clearly marked, saying what will happen when you click.
Popups that launch unbidden should be hunted down and slaughtered like mangy curs.
You can make links open in new windows without javascript. Popup blockers usually allow the “open link in new window” functionality, because you have to actually click on the link to open it.
I have seen sites where the actual site is in a popup, i.e. the site’s main page is just an empty page with Javascript code that opens the content page.
It seems that some web designers consider it so important that the content page be opened to the exact pixel width/height that they designed the page for, that they are willing that their client forego part of his visitors (the ones left scratching their head before an empty page because they have got a popup blocker, or because they have Javascript disabled).
Yes. On the other hand, if you do it with javascript, it’s much easier (if not the only way) to co-ordinate script behaviour on the parent and child windows.
As a web app developer, I’ve tried to avoid popup functionality as much as possible, but occasionally there’s not much of a way around it. People want to model application dialog boxes, (something that they’re familiar with from other GUI programs) in the web domain, and they’re a useful way to add new interface controls without losing the ones you already have on the parent form.
The only appropriate use I have seen is for ‘help’ popups when you are filling out an online screen, and want more info about what they expect you to fill in here. But in those cases, they only popup when you click on them.
If the OP is asking whether there is ever any legitimate reason – other than annoying advertising – for a web page to popup a secondary window, then chrisk pretty much got it. These days, a “web page” is a rare and endangered thing. Most everything is a “web application” (webapp). And as such, the designers, owners, and builders of webapps want them to behave as much like a desktop application as possible. In that context, there certainly can be legitimate uses for popups as dialogs, as chrisk pointed out.
That being said, it is also true that most designers and builders of webapps have no appreciation for the user experience, and certainly little to no experience designing a good user interface. So many (if not most) uses of popups in webapps are mis-uses, done either out of ignorance, or a misguided attempt to be “cool” or to get better attention, etc.
Like most things, popups are not inherently bad, they are just often misused.
Maybe. I tend to say “No” and, if they really push for it, do a little ajax thing instead. I always have pop-ups blocked, and get very annoyed if the site wants to force me to allow them. I tend to think other people who are used to the internet feel the same way.
The sort of thing I was talking about doing, you CANNOT substitute for with ‘a little ajax thing’. Maybe if you’re using the popup as a side-way to get fresh information from the server, but not if you actually need new interface controls. Ajax will not give you new interface controls.
Of course, DHTML can give you new controls on the same form, if you work hard enough at it, but that’s not the same thing.
