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Pop-ups are bad, right?

July 14th, 2008

http://www.scottrade.com/switch/?id=1#

This opens a Scottrade “Switch” page.  Their content=”If you’re tired of brokerage account and transfer fees, make the switch to Scottrade online brokerage. We’ll not only help you consolidate your stock trading, IRA and mutual fund accounts, we’ll give you up to $100 back!”

The only popup I could spot is the “open a new account” text link or button.  It opens up a new smaller window:  https://apply.scottrade.com/applyonline/apply.aspx

If you choose to you may click on the link under, “Contact Us 1-800-619-SAVE” which is an email address:  support@scottrade.com  If you select the email address, you will have another popup window open: https://apply.scottrade.com/applyonline/SendEmail.aspx

I think that the pop-up windows are very low in number and controlled by the user and therefore not very annoying.  For the company, it allows for the main page to remain open and on the user’s desktop.

https://www.mcafeesecure.com/us/merchants-moreinfo.jsp

This is a McAfee site whose content=”PCI Compliance and Secure Website Certification from McAfee Secure. Automated network security audits provide an affordable means of ensuring your customers’ transactions remain secure.”

Where to find the pop-up is the “Questions?” banner on the left side: Click here to chat with a customer service representative.  It opens up a chat window allowing the customer to chat and ask for help while staying on the page.  This is valuable tool for both the website owner and the user.
This is great:  http://www.popuptest.com/   If you want to find popup windows, there you have it.  My popup blocker is working fine.  On the first link, there is supposed to be 10 popup windows and it caught all of them (but only notified me of 6).

Firefox 3.0 stopped all except:  http://www.popuptest.com/popuptest8.html   and this one: http://www.popuptest.com/popuptest6.html

So, of course, while each of these might be annoying, the  point is to test your browser’s pop-up defense and thus useful.

Obviously, not all pop-ups are unwanted.  The browser and/or pop-up killers should be smart enough to recognize or allow you the choice to view the pop-ups you actually want to view.

Entry Filed under: All, DHTML, JavaScript