Why the pop-ups and pop-unders?

I notice that a number of pages on this site - including the FAQ page - give pop-ups and pop-under advertisements now.

I don't remember it always being like that, so has a decision been taken to add this insidious and irritating form of advertising?

Pop-ups and pop-unders are a terrible way to advertise for the following reasons:

• They're downright annoying. I for one (and a LOT of people I know) will not buy ANYTHING advertised using pop-ups and pop-unders as a matter of principle.
• Most pop-up blockers will stop them, thus the advertising is never seen anyway. Just a 'click' and/or visible indication from the pop-up blocker that an ad has been blocked. If using the Windows pop-up blocker, I'll just close the Information Bar down and not allow popups.
• They make the site that serve them look cheap and nasty.
• A lot of malware is distributed by way of popups.

I'm not against advertising per se - the banner and button ads you see here are perfectly fine. Revenue has to be generated somehow, and what better way than to do it by advertising?

Having said that, some of the products and services advertised are dodgy. Check some of the ads on the FAQ page for instance. Smileycentral is advertised. That's spyware. Does this board *really* want to be associated with spyware sites?

Code:

head.scratch();

You must have an hijacker on your computer.
There's no popup ads in cprog.

This is my work PC, and I keep all PCs I run free of malware by way of scans, HijackThis, and Silent Runners. There is no chance I have a hijacker on here.

Go to the top of this page and click on the FAQ. Choose an FAQ at random and follow the link. You may need to do this a few times. If you don't get a pop-up, you'll get a notification from your pop-ups blocker that pop-ups have been blocked.

Another way I know there's not a hijacker on this PC is that it doesn't happen on any and every site. These forums, for example, are perfectly fine. Hijackers will give pop-ups indiscriminately, regardless of the site you're on.

I use firefox and noscript. Globally dissalowing javascriptis good because you can choose which domains you want to allow. I haven't had a pop-up. The only annoying thing is that some sites don't play embedded video until you allow that specific domain, and when you do a pop-up sometimes comes up.

But that's a workaround instead of addressing the real issue here, namely that this site is employing dodgy advertising practices

I agree that using FF gets rid of a LOT of problems that using IE allows ... yet to test IE7 though. I hear it has some nice features on it.

Pop up blocks are hardly considered dodgy. It's no more annoying than having ads in the middle of a movie on TV. Do you think those dodgy? Did you suddenly stopped watching TV? Or Walking in the street because of all the ads?

Furthermore, this site, as you put it, provides a valuable service for free. Certainly you don't expect it comes without a cost for the CProg implementators.

I personally never seen them, but I too use noscript, so it was invisible for me. Use whatever workarounds you may have at your disposal. And be thankful you can. Be also thankful this site exists. Or not. Your choice. Plenty of other forums out there.

What a load of tripe.

Popups can be dodgy - not necessarily are dodgy. For instance, the pop-up you get to notify you of a new PM on some forums for example.

Code:

INSERT INTO SAND VALUES ('HEAD');
COMMIT;

Originally Posted by Angoid

What a load of tripe.

For the Nth time since 1982: The Web is NOT FREE! If it comes free to you, someone is paying the bill along the way!

Popups can be dodgy - not necessarily are dodgy. For instance, the pop-up you get to notify you of a new PM on some forums for example.

And who is talking of other sites? We are talking of CProg. If you don't like the way they do it over some other web site, complain there. For pete's sake!

Huh??? That's the biggest load of rubbish I've ever read!!!!!!

Where did I say I didn't like the way other sites do it???????

And if you read my initial post properly you'll see that I didn't object to advertising - just obnoxious advertising!

I don't mind the sites where before you go to a page on the site they sometimes show an ad page where you can continue from there, or ads on flash videos before they play. That's smart advertising that propperly mimics the kind of ads on television that aren't intrusive and have been done that way for so long we're used to it and can overlook it as so.

Originally Posted by Angoid

I don't remember it always being like that, so has a decision been taken to add this insidious and irritating form of advertising?
...

• They're downright annoying. I for one (and a LOT of people I know) will not buy ANYTHING advertised using pop-ups and pop-unders as a matter of principle.
  ...
• They make the site that serve them look cheap and nasty.
• A lot of malware is distributed by way of popups.

...
...you'll see that I didn't object to advertising - just obnoxious advertising!

These are all wonderful points for the companies that advertise their products or services using pop-ups. However, you've already stated a simple solution.

Originally Posted by Angoid

• Most pop-up blockers will stop them, thus the advertising is never seen anyway.

Get over your own opinion and go yell at someone that cares. Cboard hosts the ads. That's fine by me; it contributes money to a cause I support and it's practically invisible to the user. Someone else is choosing to advertise using popups and pay sites to host their popups. If you really don't like popups that much, try expressing yourself to them.

You could also try providing a solution to the problem instead of blindly railing against the administrators of the site. For instance, Cboard could accept user donations instead of popups. Look at that...it took all of a few seconds to come up with a possible useful solution. Think before posting? Yeah, I recommend it.

* Sniff sniff * what's that horrible smell???

Oooohhhhhhh!!!!! It's Mario F and pianorain's attitudes!!! Hell, they don't half stink!! Like excrement!!!!

The attitude here is unbelievable. You can't even raise an issue such as this and get a sensible discussion going.

All you get is flames.

Rather than attacking ideas, you attack people. That's the lowest level of puerility you can go!!!!!! And it also shows you don't have anything worthwhile to contribute!

I give up.

Better yet, if you wanna be a programer you should know how to use the applications on your computer. Set them up how you want to (IE: stopping popups) I can't recall getting any pop ups from this site. I don't use noscript but the few times it may have happened it was not bothersome at all.

While you are at it, how about you go to a television company and yell at them for having advertising up. Or for how stuborn you seem to be with this opinion, I think yelling at a billboard for a couple hours might suit you well. Let it know that it should be blatantly advertising where you could be looking at trees.

[edit]
People that whine and are stubborn about something, unwilling to just fix it on their end are a perfectly good reason to discourge there stay.
[/edit]

Honestly even without noscript on the forums I frequent regularly. If you're visiting a lot of random websites (you know what I'm talking about ) then of course you should watch out for pop ups as some of them try to install crap on your computer like dialers and trojans, so the general distrust of pop-ups is understandable. For the most part, public trusted websites are just trying to make a few cents a click, and don't really need to harm your computer so it generally isn't a problem.

This thread should not exist. If the OP has a solution for advertising, his comments would be better directed to the webmaster instead of us. Forum members have nothing to do with how CProg gets its revenue.

http://www.cprogramming.com/email.html

Address whines and stuff to him, not us.