I run a webring that has a lot of X rated sites in it, and since I have to check each site before I add it, that means I end up going to a lot of cheesy adult sites. Well the one I went to today takes the fucking cake.
OVER 20 POPUPS. The whole cascading close one/two more open thing. Yes, I know, there are popup stoppers or I could use Netscape or Opera but at the time, I WASN’T so focus here…
Then came the Mother Of All Popups. It wasn’t the last one, it was somewhere in the middle… but it was absolutely full screen, had no window edges, no “X” to click… it didn’t even have the IE icon on its button on the task bar. I couldn’t right click to close it, nothing worked. I had to CTRL ALT DEL to get away from the fucker!
Needless to say, the site wasn’t admitted to the ring.
I dunno about that, World Eater - if she’d been using a pop-up stopper, she might not have found out about the pop-up from hell, and might have actually put the site in her web ring. Maybe it’s all for the best.
I don’t like popup stoppers because they use resources. I run this thing into the ground as it is. For the most part, popups aren’t a big problem–I have lightning fingers and can close them pretty damned fast
OK, folks, help me out here. Why do websites do this sort of thing? I had to disable the “preview” panel on my email reader aways back because of those wonderful spam emails that were pulling this stunt on me.
There must be a marketing reason behind it, or they wouldn’t do it. Still, I can’t for the life of me conceive of anyone thinking “Hey, great, a website that inundates my computer with a million popups whenever I sign onto it. I’m gonna sign onto this website regularly - and if it’s a pay site, I’m gonna give them my credit card number.”
I was darn sure this thread was going to be about a pop-up I saw today…one which had a very Windows-esque button marked “Close Window.” When you clicked the button, did the pop-up close? Hell no! It took you to their slimeball website.
This wasn’t from some grotty site either, it was from a research site that I was using at work!
Just to echo what others have said here and add a little - Alt F4 closes any active window in Windows, not just browser windows, so it can be quite useful in a variety of situations, including when you come across the Worst. Popup. Ever[sup]TM[/sup] :).
The reason pop-ups “work” is because of 1) novice website owners
2) novice webusers
Those pop ups that ask if there’s porn on your computer? Novice webusers click it.
Those fake “x” boxes right below the real X? Novice (and distracted experienced) webusers click it.
Put the boxes just a touch off the right side of the screen so the X is offscreen, but you can see the ad. People might click the ad accidently while trying to close it out.
There are lots of ways to fool people into coming to your site. That’s where the novice website owners come into play. They get lulled in by absolute numbers. “Put up a pop-up and 100,000 will come to your site!”
Yes, but how many will buy something once there? How many surfers were tricked into coming?
Who cares? It’s a numbers game and the person who can best manipulate the numbers gets the cash. It’s about volume and no one seems to be asking “yes, but how much money will I make through these advertisements?” Illogically, that seems to be a very distant secondary concern.
What really pisses me off is, some of them Nazi type pop-ups REALLY get nasty. They log onto IE’s history so it looks like you were in that web site when you never were. I’ve even had some attatched themselves to my “favorites” section. How the fuck do they do that?
Then the next day my wife sees this porn shit in the Favorites and the history and wants to know why the fuck I was into all these porn sites when, in fact, I never was.
In the future, moments after the last telemarketer is burned at the stake, we’ll rekindle the fire and go after people/companies that use pop ups!
