Pop Up Blockers

Sometimes, as you browse various Internet sites, you suddenly find your screen cluttered with a bunch of pop-up windows. And by the time you have closed them, others have appeared. Pop-ups are a form of advertising that irritate and try the patience of the average Internet user.

For years, pop-ups have played a controversial role in Internet advertising. Soon after pop-ups became a standard, consumers started complaining loudly, and pop-up publishers introduced a less-intrusive “pop-under”. The pop-under springs up from behind a Web page. This was a slight improvement, but did not clear the desktop “clutter” users were complaining about. Over the past few years, several top-tier publishers like Yahoo, MSN and America Online re-thought their pop policies and decided to shelf it altogether. They feared their services could suffer a major backlash if they continued using pop-up and pop-under advertising. Even smaller publishers have decided to run less pop ads. However, the menace of pop-ups continues to affect Internet users.

User’s increased frustration has led them to download and use programs that restrict pop-ups and “pop-unders”. Known as pop-up blockers, these programs control pop-ups, by blocking them from appearing on the user’s screen. How does one gauge the quality of pop-up blocker software? First, good pop-up programs should have the ability to distinguish between advertising pop-ups and windows that are part of a Web site’s coding. Additionally, the software should not interfere with the normal functions of other software applications installed on the computer.

It is common for pop-up blocking software to be bundled for free within applications such as Internet Explorer. Well known search engine companies including Google, Yahoo, and MSN offer pop-up blocking software for free. The toolbars for blocking the pop-ups are usually situated just beneath the address bar on an Internet browser. Pop-up blockers work in several ways. Some close the pop-up before it appears, while others disable the command that calls the pop-up. Some other pop-up blockers alter the source HTML of the pop-ups. However, there is another type of software that blocks pop-ups. This type is installed inside the computer’s Operating System. One such program comes with the installation of Microsoft’s Windows XP Service Pack 2. This sort of application helps protect from another source of pop-up advertising — desktop applications, known as spyware, which usually remain unaffected by browser-based pop-up blockers.

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