Let's not beat around the bush here. We all hate popups. Every time we see one we want to head for the nearest axe and put it through our computer, or at least through the company's web site. But why? There are many HTML functions of web sites that are equally as annoying and yet we don't go ballistic over them. The answer is simple. Many companies use popups in a way that serve no useful purpose and are just plain annoying. The truth is, popups can actually be very useful and welcome if used properly.

One example of a well designed and very useful popup would be as follows. You are browsing through a web site and you reach a section where you want to sign up for a particular offer that requires you to enter your name and address because this is something that is actually going to be physically mailed to you. You get to the offer on the page. While you are there you notice that there are other offers you are probably interested in. You really don't want to have to go to another page to fill out your mailing info because you want to stay on this page to look at the other offers. This is where a popup would be welcome. In clicking on the link to fill out your personal information if a popup were to appear, you could simply type the info in the popup and then after you were done and clicked the submit button, the popup closed. You would then be back at your original page and could continue on to look at more offers you were interested in. If each offer was set up this way you would never have to leave the main page. This is an example where a popup window is a wonderful thing.

Another example of where we would want a popup window, and a site that uses this technology with pure brilliance, is POGO, one of the top Internet game sites. Many of their programs require that the game be played in a popup window. But even if they didn't, with all the games available on their main page it would become a real pain to have to keep going back to the main page after playing a game and to access another one. With the popup window you can play your game while keeping the main page open. After you are done playing your game you simply close it up and you're back at the main page of games again quickly, ready to pick another one to play. Nobody makes better use of popup windows than POGO.

An example of poor popup use is a site, who's name won't be mentioned, that is a work at home site. Every link on their navigation page functions as a popup. With so many areas on this site to go to, including affiliate area, tools, jobs, personal info and tons more, you can easily end up with 7 or 8 windows open for this one site when clearly there is no need for it. In this case a simple HTML link would be sufficient to take the user to another page.

And yes, there are the companies and sales pages that insist on opening up a popup window even after you have decided you want nothing to do with their site. One sales page actually pops up a window that has an audio on it screaming at you, "Hey, this is Rod, where are you going?". This is the ultimate in annoyance. It is because of sites like these that popups get a bad rap, which is sad because they can actually be of great use.


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Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Popups
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