Internet Business Tips and Notes

Pop-ups are those annoying advertisements that - as the name says - pop up on your monitor as you surf the Internet. Their main purpose is to attract visitors to advertisers’ web sites or to collect e-mail addresses.

The pop-ups that come on your screen as a web page loads are usually caused by something called JavaScript. This is a simple programming language that can be integrated into the HTML used to build web sites.

Sometimes these pop-ups can be useful. It may ask you for your login information or something else to log you into the website, or it might give you more information on something without taking you away from the page you’re looking at. Music sites, for example, often use a pop-up for their players. These reasons are all legitimate uses and are quite a bit more acceptable than some of the advertising pop-ups.

The Javascript language can set the size of the window, where it’s displayed on the screen and even whether or not the close button gets displayed. If the menu bars and close button are hidden, it can be next to impossible to get rid of the pop-up, unless you either enter what it’s asking for or close your browser completely.

Some of these pop-ups can cause other problems as well. They may be poorly programmed, or they may be intentionally malicious and can cause many windows to be opened. And when you close one, several more open to replace it. When this happens, the only way to get rid of them is to close the browser.

A relatively new kind of pop-up is created using Flash and can be programmed to follow your mouse or to float on the screen as you scroll the window.

In addition to pop-ups created with JavaScript and Flash, ‘adware’ can create pop-up ads according to the content on a web page. Adware is usually just advertising-supported software which displays ads when you use that program. Sometimes, however, ‘adware’ refers to small hidden programs that deliver targeted advertising to your web browser. These programs may look for certain keywords on a web page and generate advertisements based on those words.

Another form of pop-up is called the pop-under. It opens a window behind the main window and you won’t see it until you close your main browser window. These types are less annoying, but can still be a pain.

The main problem with pop-ups is the nuisance they cause, and almost every web browser has some kind of pop-up killer included these days.

You can also get specialized pop-up killer software that will catch most of the pop-ups that the browsers miss, giving you an almost 100% pop-up free internet experience.

Tags: web business