Dealing with specific types of Pop-ups

Aside from disabling Active Scripting, which seems most effective, which
pop-up blockers have the ability to *crush and disarm* the following types?
Mouse-over, layered, and the kind which turn one's explorer pane into a
clone of the crappy site or some equally crappy "search engine".
Specifically these types of pop-ups:
http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test10.html
http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test11.html
and particularly these two:
http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test12.html
http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test21.html
--
thanks -
LuckyStrike
LS@smokedamagedfurniture.youcandriveitawaytoday.com

How to make a good newsgroup post:
http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
------------------------------------------------------------

*Vanguard*
Thu Aug 05 18:34:07 CDT 2004

"LuckyStrike" <LS@smokedamagedfurniture.youcandriveitawaytoday.com>
wrote in news:%235Vi%23E0eEHA.2544@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl:
> Aside from disabling Active Scripting, which seems most effective,
> which pop-up blockers have the ability to *crush and disarm* the
> following types? Mouse-over, layered, and the kind which turn one's
> explorer pane into a clone of the crappy site or some equally crappy
> "search engine". Specifically these types of pop-ups:
> http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test10.html
> http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test11.html
> and particularly these two:
> http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test12.html
> http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test21.html

PopUp Cop killed all those popups. However, the last 2 required that I
up the irritation level, or alternatively I could add more kills to my
default irritation level. You can modify the irritation level(s) or
create your own. One feature that I've requested and haven't seen yet
in PopUp Cop is a list of URLs and what irritation level to assign to
them. That way, I could assign a higher irritation level to the more
rude sites without having to change from my default and preferred
irritation level for all the other sites. You can add sites to its
blacklist and they can also include paths (so they are a subdomain or
path under that site for a particular popup) and you can whitelist them
or specify that those in the Trusted Sites security zone don't get
blocked. Still I'd like a separate list (not a white- or blacklist of
domains or URLs) but one that assigns irritation levels to specific
sites or URLs.

--
__________________________________________________
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__________________________________________________

LuckyStrike
Thu Aug 05 18:53:08 CDT 2004

I appreciate your thoughts on this. Before I "run out" and purchase PopUp
Cop, I would hope to get a few more replies and opinions. It is assuring to
know that one can instantly block the former two, whilst with some
manipulation (not too much manipulation that's slow, I trust) the latter two
can also be handled.

Just FYI: Google toolbar is ok, but doesn't cut it for the devious types;
another older program I've used is Smasher, but it is too cumbersome to
program, and by the time you'd get it configured, you'd time-out if on
dial-up. :-) It would be nice if one didn't need to enter the pushy website
individually to get a handle on these PITA's.
--
LuckyStrike
LS@smokedamagedfurniture.youcandriveitawaytoday.com
------------------------------------------------------------
"*Vanguard*" wrote in message news:OwvD1S0eEHA.396@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> "LuckyStrike" wrote:
> > Aside from disabling Active Scripting, which seems most effective,
> > which pop-up blockers have the ability to *crush and disarm* the
> > following types? Mouse-over, layered, and the kind which turn one's
> > explorer pane into a clone of the crappy site or some equally crappy
> > "search engine". Specifically these types of pop-ups:
> > http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test10.html
> > http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test11.html
> > and particularly these two:
> > http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test12.html
> > http://www.kephyr.com/popupkillertest/test/test21.html
>
> PopUp Cop killed all those popups. However, the last 2 required that I
> up the irritation level, or alternatively I could add more kills to my
> default irritation level. You can modify the irritation level(s) or
> create your own. One feature that I've requested and haven't seen yet
> in PopUp Cop is a list of URLs and what irritation level to assign to
> them. That way, I could assign a higher irritation level to the more
> rude sites without having to change from my default and preferred
> irritation level for all the other sites. You can add sites to its
> blacklist and they can also include paths (so they are a subdomain or
> path under that site for a particular popup) and you can whitelist them
> or specify that those in the Trusted Sites security zone don't get
> blocked. Still I'd like a separate list (not a white- or blacklist of
> domains or URLs) but one that assigns irritation levels to specific
> sites or URLs.
>
> --
> __________________________________________________
> *** Post replies to newsgroup. Share with others.
> (E-mail: domain = ".com", add "=NEWS=" to Subject)
> __________________________________________________
>

*Vanguard*
Thu Aug 05 20:37:16 CDT 2004

"LuckyStrike" <LS@smokedamagedfurniture.youcandriveitawaytoday.com>
wrote in news:OM5ffd0eEHA.2764@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl:
> I appreciate your thoughts on this. Before I "run out" and purchase
> PopUp Cop, I would hope to get a few more replies and opinions. It is
> assuring to know that one can instantly block the former two, whilst
> with some manipulation (not too much manipulation that's slow, I
> trust) the latter two can also be handled.
>
> Just FYI: Google toolbar is ok, but doesn't cut it for the devious
> types; another older program I've used is Smasher, but it is too
> cumbersome to program, and by the time you'd get it configured, you'd
> time-out if on dial-up. :-) It would be nice if one didn't need to
> enter the pushy website individually to get a handle on these PITA's.

You get a 30-day trial. I know I trialed it until almost the end of its
trial period before deciding to buy it. During that time I was also
checking out lots of other popup killers (if they were free or provided
a non-crippled trial version). PopUp Cop adds a toolbar to IE so all
you need to do is drag its slider to change irritation levels. That's
what I did, first trying all 4 links using my default level (which was
slightly modified by me from the install-time default irritation level),
and then moving the slider over to retry the last 2 links. I suppose I
could then compare what the differences were in the irritation levels
and test changing each setting one at a time to see what effected the
block but the point was to just to do a quick check to see if the block
was even possible. I don't yet use the beta version 2.5 (I don't want
to waste time on beta versions unless a fix or feature is mandatory)
which has even more blocking, like cascading style sheets that pretend
to be popups or interstitial pages that display for ads between the page
you clicked on and the eventual target page (but I won't know if these
work until 2.5 gets released). I just again submitted an RFE (Request
for Enhancement) to the developer asking that another list be added to
specify domains or URLs to assign an irritation level to each in the
list so that I don't have to react to a site to move the irritation
level slider but instead have it done automatically for me.

PopUp Cop is not only a good popup killer but has other features that I
really like. It includes cookie management. In IE, I already have it
configured to allow 1st party cookies, block 3rd party cookies, and
allow per-session cookies (these expire and get deleted when you leave
the domain for that cookie). However, there are still lots of 1st party
cookies that I don't want lingering around, like from microsoft.com,
msn.com, yahoo.com, and elsewhere. Allowing them in IE's cookie
management won't get rid of them after leaving a site and I don't want
to block them because the cookie is actually needed for their web pages
and site to function correctly. With PopUp Cop, I can whitelist the
domains for which I want to keep [1st party] cookies. Any cookies for
domains in PopUp Cop's whitelist will get deleted upon exit from the
last instance of IE. This effectively forces all non-whitelisted
cookies to be per-session cookies. There are cookie managers that can
also do this but PopUp Cop is only loaded when IE runs (which is the
only time you need cookie management and popup control) rather than
continuously usurping memory and CPU cycles when the browser isn't even
loaded.

PopUp can control whether or not Flash content plays at which irritation
level, and you can select to play blocked Flash content (some sites uses
Flash to display menues so their structure cannot be stolen, so I visit,
it gets blocked, and I can chose to play it anyway). Similarly, if a
popup gets blocked but you decide you need to see it, like maybe it was
a popup to display help, then you can ask PopUp Cop to display a list of
blocked popups and select which one to see or just let it display the
last popup that got blocked. It has XGuard to warn you when some site
is attempting to download an ActiveX control, plus you can whitelist or
blacklist sites regarding AX downloads. It will block those Geocities
"Ad Squares" that popup for personal web pages (whereas if you block
them normally then the personal web page may not display because the
requirement is that the ad square be rendered to see the personal web
page). The option to disable alerts for script errors can get reset in
IE, but PopUp Cop can eliminate useless warning dialogs. You can
enable/disable meta-refresh which can be used to redirect you to a
different page (a replacement link will get displayed if you want to
manually do the meta-refresh). You can do various cleanups on exit from
the last instance of IE, like purging the history list, delete cookies
(for those not in your whitelist), delete favicons, clear typed URLs,
clear the recent documents lists from the Start menu, and really purge
the browser's temp file cache (IE has this option but often it doesn't
work). It isn't free and may have more features that what you want. I
haven't used the XGuard feature (although it is enabled) since
SpywareGuard catches those, too.

One feature that I have used on rare occasion is where I want to allow a
site to do popups but there is a specific popup that I want to block. I
need to allow popups at www.thawte.com in order to let it function in
creating new freemail certificates (i.e., they are created within a
popup window). However, everytime I login, I used to get a popup asking
me if I wanted to change from using my social security number for my
login to using one of my e-mail addresses. I didn't and found this
popup a nuisance. So I right-clicked on the popup's title bar, selected
to make it a normal window, copied the URL for this popup from the
Address bar, and added it to PopUp Cop's blacklist. Rather than
whitelist this domain (and then blacklist the one popup's URL), I added
the domain to my Trusted Sites security zone. PopUp Cop has an option
you can enable to have it ignore popup killing for domains in the
Trusted Sites zone, but I could still blacklist the URL for just this
one popup. Popups from the domain didn't get blocked except for this
one.

Another feature that has been handy is the PopUp Cop will NOT block
popups that are triggered by using a shortcut in your Links toolbar
(i.e., URL shortcuts in your Links folder under your Favorites folder).
If you disable javascript in IE, or for many popup killers, a shortcut
in your Links toolbar that uses open() to create a new popup window will
also get blocked. I find it handy to use javascript for a shortcut to
open a new window. I use Sneakemail.com to create e-mail aliases and
prefer that site show up in a popup when I happen to hit a site that
wants me to register using a valid e-mail address (to which they send a
confirmation e-mails that has a link to complete the registration).
Obviously if you click on a link that opens a new window then that
shouldn't be blocked, either, because that was a deliberate action by
you.

There are times that even sliding the irritation slider to its minimal
irritation level still causes problems on a web site, so you can click
on the PopUp Cop toolbar to disable it quickly (and reenable it just as
quickly). It's a good product for the price but I'd suggest testing it
through its trial period first to make sure it is what you want. I
remember trialing something like twenty popup killers over a 2-month
interval and settled on PopUp Cop although it did cost money. It's hard
to beat free but if free doesn't provide what you want then you need to
consider paying for something that does what you want. If I find
something that is better in eradicating popups and also includes as
many, or more, features as PopUp Cop then that's what I'll use provided
they don't charge too much for it. At $20, I felt I got a good deal
with PopUp Cop. For other killers costing more and doing less, I
definitely didn't feel a need to use those, and if some product wants to
charge twice as much then it has to do twice as much as PopUp Cop. The
only disadvantage to PopUp Cop is that it is an add-on for IE (so it
only works with IE). Unlike products where you have to pay a yearly
subscription fee or pay for upgrades, once you buy PopUp Cop then you
get upgrades for free forever afterward (that's what I've been told but
have yet to get beyond the 2.x version to verify that I don't have to
pay for a 3.x version). Also, 1 license covers all computers in your
home for your personal use. The author has responded in a day and often
within a few hours of a tech support e-mail sent to him.

If I continue using trial or shareware, I buy it. However, on other
users' computers, I tend to give them the Google Toolbar to use its
popup killer (but I disable the advanced features of page rank and page
info since those users may not be aware of the privacy consideration for
those features). If they want something more than what Google Toolbar
blocks for popups, they are free to do their own evaluations. And if
they are conned by the naysayers of anything Google, they can always
uninstall it, and since the advanced features were disabled then nothing
of their navigations got recorded.

By all means go trial any free or trial version of popup killers. Just
be sure to keep a log of notes regarding what they did (that you were
specifically looking for), which ones worked or failed, what additional
features they had that you might actually use, and other such notes so
that you can review them in making your decision. You can quickly get
lost in a flood of varying products with different feature sets and
capabilities.

--
__________________________________________________
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(E-mail: domain = ".com", add "=NEWS=" to Subject)
__________________________________________________

LuckyStrike
Thu Aug 05 21:00:00 CDT 2004

You forgot to mention the free toaster and does the dishes part. :-)

It sounds very able, and perhaps complicated (only by description; probably
not in actual use) or very wide ranging. At any rate, if I give it a shot
and it works, it might well be worth the modest $20.00 to deal with the
*insidious* type of pop-up. I would hope that if I install it with Total
Uninstall I can remove virtually every shred of it's presence, should it
prove to be unsatisfactory for whatever reason. Normally, I will avoid
installing too many Trial or time limited programs as they can "die" and
leave lots of stuff in the Registry... then you must seek that out and
manually dispose of the entries, so as to not have Registry bloat.

Anyway, I am thankful for your complete and time consuming post that you've
written on the program. It answered a lot of questions and thoughts -
including some which hadn't occurred to me.

Thanks *Vanguard*.

Regards -
--
LuckyStrike
LS@smokedamagedfurniture.youcandriveitawaytoday.com
------------------------------------------------------------
"*Vanguard*" wrote in message
news:e7N%23oX1eEHA.1604@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
> You get a 30-day trial. I know I trialed it until almost the end of its
> trial period before deciding to buy it. During that time I was also
> checking out lots of other popup killers (if they were free or provided
> a non-crippled trial version). PopUp Cop adds a toolbar to IE so all
> you need to do is drag its slider to change irritation levels. That's
> what I did, first trying all 4 links using my default level (which was
> slightly modified by me from the install-time default irritation level),
> and then moving the slider over to retry the last 2 links. I suppose I
> could then compare what the differences were in the irritation levels
> and test changing each setting one at a time to see what effected the
> block but the point was to just to do a quick check to see if the block
> was even possible. I don't yet use the beta version 2.5 (I don't want
> to waste time on beta versions unless a fix or feature is mandatory)
> which has even more blocking, like cascading style sheets that pretend
> to be popups or interstitial pages that display for ads between the page
> you clicked on and the eventual target page (but I won't know if these
> work until 2.5 gets released). I just again submitted an RFE (Request
> for Enhancement) to the developer asking that another list be added to
> specify domains or URLs to assign an irritation level to each in the
> list so that I don't have to react to a site to move the irritation
> level slider but instead have it done automatically for me.
>
> PopUp Cop is not only a good popup killer but has other features that I
> really like. It includes cookie management. In IE, I already have it
> configured to allow 1st party cookies, block 3rd party cookies, and
> allow per-session cookies (these expire and get deleted when you leave
> the domain for that cookie). However, there are still lots of 1st party
> cookies that I don't want lingering around, like from microsoft.com,
> msn.com, yahoo.com, and elsewhere. Allowing them in IE's cookie
> management won't get rid of them after leaving a site and I don't want
> to block them because the cookie is actually needed for their web pages
> and site to function correctly. With PopUp Cop, I can whitelist the
> domains for which I want to keep [1st party] cookies. Any cookies for
> domains in PopUp Cop's whitelist will get deleted upon exit from the
> last instance of IE. This effectively forces all non-whitelisted
> cookies to be per-session cookies. There are cookie managers that can
> also do this but PopUp Cop is only loaded when IE runs (which is the
> only time you need cookie management and popup control) rather than
> continuously usurping memory and CPU cycles when the browser isn't even
> loaded.
>
> PopUp can control whether or not Flash content plays at which irritation
> level, and you can select to play blocked Flash content (some sites uses
> Flash to display menues so their structure cannot be stolen, so I visit,
> it gets blocked, and I can chose to play it anyway). Similarly, if a
> popup gets blocked but you decide you need to see it, like maybe it was
> a popup to display help, then you can ask PopUp Cop to display a list of
> blocked popups and select which one to see or just let it display the
> last popup that got blocked. It has XGuard to warn you when some site
> is attempting to download an ActiveX control, plus you can whitelist or
> blacklist sites regarding AX downloads. It will block those Geocities
> "Ad Squares" that popup for personal web pages (whereas if you block
> them normally then the personal web page may not display because the
> requirement is that the ad square be rendered to see the personal web
> page). The option to disable alerts for script errors can get reset in
> IE, but PopUp Cop can eliminate useless warning dialogs. You can
> enable/disable meta-refresh which can be used to redirect you to a
> different page (a replacement link will get displayed if you want to
> manually do the meta-refresh). You can do various cleanups on exit from
> the last instance of IE, like purging the history list, delete cookies
> (for those not in your whitelist), delete favicons, clear typed URLs,
> clear the recent documents lists from the Start menu, and really purge
> the browser's temp file cache (IE has this option but often it doesn't
> work). It isn't free and may have more features that what you want. I
> haven't used the XGuard feature (although it is enabled) since
> SpywareGuard catches those, too.
>
> One feature that I have used on rare occasion is where I want to allow a
> site to do popups but there is a specific popup that I want to block. I
> need to allow popups at www.thawte.com in order to let it function in
> creating new freemail certificates (i.e., they are created within a
> popup window). However, everytime I login, I used to get a popup asking
> me if I wanted to change from using my social security number for my
> login to using one of my e-mail addresses. I didn't and found this
> popup a nuisance. So I right-clicked on the popup's title bar, selected
> to make it a normal window, copied the URL for this popup from the
> Address bar, and added it to PopUp Cop's blacklist. Rather than
> whitelist this domain (and then blacklist the one popup's URL), I added
> the domain to my Trusted Sites security zone. PopUp Cop has an option
> you can enable to have it ignore popup killing for domains in the
> Trusted Sites zone, but I could still blacklist the URL for just this
> one popup. Popups from the domain didn't get blocked except for this
> one.
>
> Another feature that has been handy is the PopUp Cop will NOT block
> popups that are triggered by using a shortcut in your Links toolbar
> (i.e., URL shortcuts in your Links folder under your Favorites folder).
> If you disable javascript in IE, or for many popup killers, a shortcut
> in your Links toolbar that uses open() to create a new popup window will
> also get blocked. I find it handy to use javascript for a shortcut to
> open a new window. I use Sneakemail.com to create e-mail aliases and
> prefer that site show up in a popup when I happen to hit a site that
> wants me to register using a valid e-mail address (to which they send a
> confirmation e-mails that has a link to complete the registration).
> Obviously if you click on a link that opens a new window then that
> shouldn't be blocked, either, because that was a deliberate action by
> you.
>
> There are times that even sliding the irritation slider to its minimal
> irritation level still causes problems on a web site, so you can click
> on the PopUp Cop toolbar to disable it quickly (and reenable it just as
> quickly). It's a good product for the price but I'd suggest testing it
> through its trial period first to make sure it is what you want. I
> remember trialing something like twenty popup killers over a 2-month
> interval and settled on PopUp Cop although it did cost money. It's hard
> to beat free but if free doesn't provide what you want then you need to
> consider paying for something that does what you want. If I find
> something that is better in eradicating popups and also includes as
> many, or more, features as PopUp Cop then that's what I'll use provided
> they don't charge too much for it. At $20, I felt I got a good deal
> with PopUp Cop. For other killers costing more and doing less, I
> definitely didn't feel a need to use those, and if some product wants to
> charge twice as much then it has to do twice as much as PopUp Cop. The
> only disadvantage to PopUp Cop is that it is an add-on for IE (so it
> only works with IE). Unlike products where you have to pay a yearly
> subscription fee or pay for upgrades, once you buy PopUp Cop then you
> get upgrades for free forever afterward (that's what I've been told but
> have yet to get beyond the 2.x version to verify that I don't have to
> pay for a 3.x version). Also, 1 license covers all computers in your
> home for your personal use. The author has responded in a day and often
> within a few hours of a tech support e-mail sent to him.
>
> If I continue using trial or shareware, I buy it. However, on other
> users' computers, I tend to give them the Google Toolbar to use its
> popup killer (but I disable the advanced features of page rank and page
> info since those users may not be aware of the privacy consideration for
> those features). If they want something more than what Google Toolbar
> blocks for popups, they are free to do their own evaluations. And if
> they are conned by the naysayers of anything Google, they can always
> uninstall it, and since the advanced features were disabled then nothing
> of their navigations got recorded.
>
> By all means go trial any free or trial version of popup killers. Just
> be sure to keep a log of notes regarding what they did (that you were
> specifically looking for), which ones worked or failed, what additional
> features they had that you might actually use, and other such notes so
> that you can review them in making your decision. You can quickly get
> lost in a flood of varying products with different feature sets and
> capabilities.
>
> --
> __________________________________________________
> *** Post replies to newsgroup. Share with others.
> (E-mail: domain = ".com", add "=NEWS=" to Subject)
> __________________________________________________
>

PA
Thu Aug 05 21:33:01 CDT 2004

Now where have I heard that before?

LuckyStrike wrote:
> You forgot to mention the free toaster and does the dishes part. :-)

LuckyStrike
Thu Aug 05 22:33:19 CDT 2004

It's a cross between "Weird Science" (sophomoric humor movie with Anthony
Michael Hall) and You Know Who.
http://161.58.5.90/weird/toaster.wav

LS
----

"PA Bear" <PABear@mvps.org> wrote in message
news:u0Us121eEHA.372@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> Now where have I heard that before?
>
> LuckyStrike wrote:
> > You forgot to mention the free toaster and does the dishes part. :-)