Slashdot Mirror
"Pop Under" Advestising Filtering?
Mansing asks: "It has finally happened. A good number of the mainstream web sites my users access (NY Times, CNN) have gone to using "Pop Under" advertising. For those who have missed this delightful advertising approach, the content provider places a small Javascript script in their web page that opens a 700 by 420 pixel window with the advertiser's content. (See FastClick for details about 'Pop Unders') The first advertiser I noticed was X10.com. As mentioned previously on Slashdot, that particular advertiser has an "opt out" page that will remove the advertisement for thirty days. (Which doesn't exactly work correctly) There have always been small, unobtrusive pop up Javascript windows to promote something from the site, but normally these windows were features of the site, not an advertisement. " It all boils down to immature use of Javascript's window.open() call. There are a few browsers out there that have implemented the beginnings of a solution, though. Konqueror, for example, can tailor the use of Javascript by site domain and can globally disable the use of window.open(). Now if the two features could be combined somehow, in browsers like Konqueror and Mozilla, we'd have an effective tool against such behavior.
"The quick solution is to disable Javascript in the browser. However, this is unacceptable to the users. Another solution is to boycott those sites that use "Pop Under" advertising. This solution is becoming more untenable as the spread of this advertising format has infected so many popular sites. Boycotting the advertiser is effective, but is doesn't remove the advertisements.
Surely in the Slashdot community there must be a technical solution for these bandwidth burning advertisements. Has anyone implemented a solution to this, or are we Internet users stuck being abused by marketing droids who don't realize how quickly they are annoying the very markets they seek?"
I routinely leave it completely off. There are a few sites, such as my banking site, which use JS and the pages will not work without them. For those opages, if I decide they are worthwhile enough, I turn JS on and then disable it again later. My enjoyment of the web has only increased.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The OmniWeb browser on Mac OSX (I don't know if they make it for other platforms) has an option that says "Scripts are allowed to open new windows only in response to being clicked."
This is probably the best solution to this that I have seen. It keeps the useful Javascript and you don't get the pop-up ads.
It also keeps tons of windows from popping up when I'm umm...doing anatomical research.
-------------------------------
Not open source, but free (as in beer) for personal use and the best and easiest to use that I've found so far. There's even a Linux version.
It doesn't break too many things, and is easily temporarily disabled when it does. Very handy for Geocities, Astalavista (the sites with the cracks and serials always have pr0n popups), Xoom, etc. pages.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.