Windows Vista: The Missing Manual
10.7. The Pop-up Blocker: All Versions
The ad banners at the top of every Web page are annoying enoughbut nowadays, they're just the beginning. The world's smarmiest advertisers have begun inundating us with pop-up and pop-under ads: nasty little windows that appear in front of the browser window, or, worse , behind it, waiting to jump out the moment you close your browser. They're often deceptive, masquerading as error messages or dialog boxes... and they'll do absolutely anything to get you to click inside them (Figure 10-11).
Pop-ups are more than just annoying; they're also potentially dangerous. They're a favorite trick that hackers use to deposit spyware on your PC. Clicking a pop-up can begin the silent downloading process. That's true even if the pop-up seems to serve a legitimate purposeasking you to participate in a survey, for example. Internet Explorer, fortunately, has a pop-up blocker . It comes automatically turned on; you don't have to do anything. You'll be browsing along, and then one day you'll see the "Pop-up blocked" message in the yellow Information bar (Figure 10-11, top). Tip: At the outset, IE does more than just show the Info bar message. It also opens a little dialog boxyes, a pop-upto brag that it's blocked a pop-up (Figure 10-12). For best results, click "Don't show this message again," and then click OK. (The "pop-up blocked" message still shows on the Information bar, so you'll always know when a pop-up is sent into the ether .)
Note that IE blocks only pop-ups that are spawned automatically , not those that appear when you click something (like a seating diagram on a concert-tickets site). And it doesn't block pop-ups from your local network, or from Web sites you've designated as Trusted (choose Tools Tip: As you can read in Figure 10-11, there is a High setting that blocks all pop-ups, even the ones that appear when you click a link. Even then, you still have a way to see the occasional important pop-up: hold down the Ctrl key as your Web page is loading. 10.7.1. Overriding the Pop-up Block
Sometimes, though, you want to see the pop-up. Some sites, for example, use pop-up windows as a way to deliver informationa seating chart when you're buying plane or concert tickets, for example. Tip: When a useful pop-up makes it through the Pop-up Blocker, it usually appears in its own small, separate window. But you can exploit Internet Explorer's new tabbed-browsing feature (page 373) by making the pop-up open in a new tab.Choose Tools | ||||||
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Your options:
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Temporarily Allow Pop-ups lets this Web site's pop-ups through just for this browsing session. Next time, pop-ups will be blocked again.
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Always Allow Pop-ups from This Site does what it says.
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Settings lets you configure the Pop-up Blocker. From the menu that appears, select Turn Off Pop-up Blocker to turn the blocker off. Turn off Show Information Bar for Pop-ups if you don't even want the yellow Information bar to appear when a pop-up is blocked. Select More Settings, and a screen appears that lets you always allow or block pop-ups from specific sites (Figure 10-14).
Figure 10-14. Here's another way to specify Web sites whose pop-ups are always OK by you: type an address and then click Add. (This is the same screen that appears if you click the Information bar after a pop-up is blocked, and then select Setting.)
This dialog box also lets you control how you're notified in the event of a pop-up: with a sound, with a note in the Information bar, or neither . You can also use the Filter Level pop-up menu to tone down Internet Explorer's aggressiveness in blocking pop-ups. The High level, for example, blocks all pop-ups, even ones that Internet Explorer determines to be necessary for the site to run properly.
Tip: If you've installed some other company's pop-up blocker, you can turn off IE's version by choosing ToolsPop-up Blocker Turn Off Pop-up Blocker.