Don't Be Annoying
Why You Should NEVER Have your Site In a Popup Window
Since the beggining of dolling there has been a plethora of sites using that old favorite technique of putting websites in popup windows. You know what I'm talking about. First you arrive on some splash page with a little picture in the middle that says "enter". You click on it and up pops the website. Well I'm here to tell you that while this may have been a popular techinique 6 or 7 years ago in the age of frequent popups and spyware, there is absolutely no value in making your website a popup in today's world.
Many browsers today have popup blockers that will keep your site from popping up. Because of so many popup ads, browsers have settings which automatically block anything that tries to popup. If you're counting on this technique you run the risk of having poeople not being able to see your website. Some popup blockers don't even tell someone when a popup has been blocked. For all they know, when they clicked on your little picture that said "enter" the link appears broken. So be careful, just becuase your website seems to work for you doesn't mean it works for everybody.
People associate pop-ups with ad-ware and spyware. Reveered web accessibility guru, Jakob Nielsen, states that pop-up windows should only be used as a "supplement to a primary browser window" and should never contain "a full page of info..." Why? Because according to studies when popups do get through popup filters "users often close the pop-ups without even looking at their content". This is because they automatically assume the popup is an unwanted ad or that it will infect their computer with spyware. So don't use them "for anything essential". People won't realize what's going on and they will simply leave your site.
Putting your doll website in a popup window greatly annoys users especially if you have overridden browser window standards (no address bar, restricting the size of the window, disabling scrolling, etc.). The only reason why I can see why anyone would put their website in a popup window is because they want complete control over the look of the window. They unwittingly cause massive navigational headaches when they override default browser tools like the address bar, restricting the window size, and preventing scrolling features.
If you set a predetermined size for your popup window website, any external link that you provide will display in that small constricted size that you designed for your website EVEN IF you tell it to open in a new window. This is because current browsers like IE7 and Firefox open these pages in new tabs instead of opening a completely new window. So any link you post will have all the same window restrictions you put on your site. While a small little window size may work for your web design, it will NOT work for 99% of other websites out there
When you use popups and disable default browser settings all the external links you provide are useless. Why uselesss? They can't scroll or resize the new webpage you so graciously provided a link to which means they can't see but a small portion of the site. Also, when you disable the toolbar at the top, people can't go back, they can't go forward, they can't even bookmark the new link to try and view it later at full size. When coupled with disabling right-click, which is also a henous offense, your website wins the worst navigation award ever! All of the options that should have been available in the toolbar at the top of the page were at least available with right-click, until you ruined it. Now they really can't go back, go forward, bookmark, select, refresh, stop, etc. They can't even see what the url to your website is! All they can do is close the window. What was the point of that?
Disabling the Scrollbar in popup site with frames(by declaring a set height and then applying "overflow: hidden") may look fine with your website template, but if you have your website in a pop-up window, any external links opened will have the scrollbar disabled as well. This means users will be unable to look at the content below the fold of the page of any links you provide them. To avoid this problem entirely- don't have your website in pop-up window.
« Go Back To Tips For Doll Sites