Saturday, December 06, 2003 |
Down with web site pop ups
It seems more and more that we are experiencing an increasing prevalence of web site pop ups.
These are those annoying little extra windows that pop up when you go to some sites.
Previously these abominations were only used in porn sites, often opening up when you entered or exited them (at least that's what a friend told me any way). Exiting those windows would then trigger another pop up window to fire and so it would go on.
Sadly we are now seeing these evil things being used by main stream sites like The Sydney Morning Herald's web site www.smh.com.au and CNN's site www.cnn.com.
Recently I wrote to The Sydney Morning Herald to complain about their decent into using the same hit generating tactics as the sleazy porn site operators.
It seems that they are basically taking the line that everyone else is doing it so why shouldn't I?
This reasoning is always a bad mistake. Its use can been seen in examples such as the occupation of Europe by Nazi Germany, the temporary popularity of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party or the disturbing trend of people wearing short sleeve shirts over the top of long sleeves.
Now whilst I would never insinuate that The Sydney Morning Herald supports Nazism or One Nation, I would suggest that doing something wrong (web pop ups are no different than the scourge of spam email) just because everyone else is doing it, does not absolve you of your guilt.
It seems more and more that we are experiencing an increasing prevalence of web site pop ups.
These are those annoying little extra windows that pop up when you go to some sites.
Previously these abominations were only used in porn sites, often opening up when you entered or exited them (at least that's what a friend told me any way). Exiting those windows would then trigger another pop up window to fire and so it would go on.
Sadly we are now seeing these evil things being used by main stream sites like The Sydney Morning Herald's web site www.smh.com.au and CNN's site www.cnn.com.
Recently I wrote to The Sydney Morning Herald to complain about their decent into using the same hit generating tactics as the sleazy porn site operators.
|
This is their reply;
From: "SMH Online" Reply-To: smhonline@access.fairfax.com.au Subject: RE: SMH Site Feedback Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2003 16:06:18 +1100 hi actually, they're capped to one per user session. if you go to any US site, they're all over the place. by any standard our pop-ups are modest, we believe. as a measure, we've only had about half a dozen complaints about these over the past few months. as a comparison, if we muck up the crosswords, we can get over 20 emails in a day. regards smh online |
It seems that they are basically taking the line that everyone else is doing it so why shouldn't I?
This reasoning is always a bad mistake. Its use can been seen in examples such as the occupation of Europe by Nazi Germany, the temporary popularity of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party or the disturbing trend of people wearing short sleeve shirts over the top of long sleeves.
Now whilst I would never insinuate that The Sydney Morning Herald supports Nazism or One Nation, I would suggest that doing something wrong (web pop ups are no different than the scourge of spam email) just because everyone else is doing it, does not absolve you of your guilt.
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