Spring Into Windows XP Service Pack 2

Manage SP2's Pop-up Blocker

As you have seen, Service Pack 2 now adds a pop-up blocker to Internet Explorer.

You can manage the pop-up blocker to best suit your needs by first opening an IE window and choosing Tools | Pop-up Blocker | Pop-Up Blocker settings….

You see the dialog box shown in Figure 14-13.

From this dialog box, you can add sites if you always want their pop-ups displayed, and there are plenty of examples. LaunchCast, a popular music site, launches its Internet music player in a pop-up. Just type the address into the "Address of Website to allow" section and click Add.

And let's say, for example, you don't like the little "pu-doinking" noise that occurs when IE blocks a pop-up. Turn it off! Just clear the check box titled "Play a sound when a pop-up is blocked."

If you're really feeling frisky, you can change the pop-up blocker sound altogether. To do so, open the Sounds and Audio Devices Control Panel applet and choose the Sounds tab. In the Program events section, look for the Windows Explorer event "Blocked Pop-up Window" sound and then browse for the sound of choice.

Notice, too, that you could have just disabled the pop-up blocker with the menu selection just above "Pop-Up Blocker settings."

You can also manage your pop-up settings on an ad-hoc basis by using the pop-up Information Bar that appears at the top of the IE window whenever Pop-Up Blocker stops a pop-up. You then just click the pop-up bar and choose from the selections shown in Figure 14-14.

As you can see, you can also use this Information Bar to choose to allow all pop-ups for a given site, which accomplishes the same thing as the process outlined previously.