Three Things to Fix on the Net

By Laura Yecies

These aren’t necessarily security concerns, but I also think security companies tend to be in a good position to be consumer advocates for good netiquette. In that spirit, here are three things that I’d like to see pass into the annals of Internet history:

#1 – Pop-Ups.
I hate pop-up ads. I don’t mind advertising per se, but pop-ups disrupt the fun. Even more, I can’t stand the “click” pop-ups, IE pop-up ads that only appear when you accidentally click your mouse on some area of a Web site (even without a link). For example, sometimes when I’m reading a long story, I’ll highlight text with the curser in order to not lose my place and better follow the content. But on some sites, this triggers a pop-up ad. Or even a pop-under (so when I close out my browser, I have 12 windows open). I think these bypass pop-up blockers because I’ve somehow initiated it. Even more, I’m annoyed when my pop-up blocker blocks a pop-up that I actually needed to see.

#2 – Blocked “back” actions.
Like most people, when I surf the Web I jump around a lot between sites and within sites. Recently, I’ve encountered a number of sites using that old 1998 trick of preventing my browser from returning to a previous page in my history that’s “off site.” In order to actually leave, in IE I have to hold the back-button and go back two pages and avoid the block. Why? Does the Web site actually believe I will stay? That I was accidentally leaving? And didn’t Google ban sites that do this from search results along time ago? Is it no longer enforced?

#3 – Sound.
I keep my sound function on, because I like to watch videos and listen to music directly out of iTunes. But in general, when I’m surfing the Internet, I do not want Web sites to make a peep. But alas, that’s another trend that seems to be reappearing, especially as advertisers seek “richer” ways to get in your face and companies put podcasts and steaming video to showcase products. But it’s incredibly startling and annoying when you drop in on a Web site and unexpectedly it talks to you. Or plays a cute jingle (or concerto). And unfortunately my home PC has no external mute button, so I have to click the volume icon, and wait for it to come up, and then mute it. And smile sheepishly at anyone nearby.

So how about a few compromises to Web operators: don’t pop-up things I don’t need or want, don’t hold my browser hostage, and allow me to choose if I want to listen to something or not. That would make me a happy surfer.

Comments

[Jens]

I totally agree on the stupid disabled back actions. What reaction do they expect, "oh well, since they did not let me go back I will just keep on reading on the page I tried to leave instead...". C'mon...

Another frustrating thing is popus that appear when you click on a non text area. Sometimes you have to click somewhere in the screen to enable scrolling and then the sneake web master has put a popup ad right there. This is very common on some major news papers web pages.

[a software developer]

I agree with your general points however as a web developer I can see that your finger may be pointing slightly wide of the mark.
1. "Click" Pop-ups.
It can be very useful to have windows pop-up that can pop-up on demand that do not interfere with your browsing experience. Take for example the privacy or terms and conditions links, where you need to see them but wish to return to the point where you were afterwards. This is especially important in the case where you are entering credit card details etc because if you were to use the same page to navigate to the terms page you would either have to re-enter the information that you had already typed on the page or the web page would somehow have to store your credit card details somewhere while you were on the terms page. Thus making your credit card details more vulnerable to hackers/fraudsters.
So the remaining problems becomes how to identify when a piece of text is a link(that might open in a new window) and how to highlight text on a page without causing a link.
Firstly to identify a link. Make sure that the status bar on your browser is visible. (View menu/Status bar should be ticked in IE7)
When you put the cursor over the link text will appear in the status bar. This shows that a pop-up might occur if you click it.
I say might because clicking it might have many other effects. In most cases the mouse pointer will also change to a hand icon.
A web browser developer/ antivirus developer might be able to produce a tool that would put an icon over any links that might pop-up but it is probably not an easy task.

To select text without causing pop-ups is simply a case of ensuring that you are not on a link when you start selecting text.

The blocked "back" actions
I strongly agree with you in terms of the
blocked back. It does irritate the user and make the user less linkely to want to visit the site again. There can be technical reasons for this rather than a desire on the part of the company whose website it is to keep you there. However at best this practise is lazy on the part of the web developers. As a developer I have never found a case where a beter mechanism could not be put in place.
Google cannot "block" websites that use this technique, they can only move pages that use the technique down the rankings. (It is possible one of the miriad of freeware tools that Google supplies does do something to alter this behaviour, but whilst Google's search engine is still probably the best I do not recommend use of their software because it often behaves like malware; being difficult to keep off your system. Why do Google want their software on your machine so badly?)

On your point about sound, maybe can I suggest you get a keyboard with a mute button on it and only switch the volume on when you want to. (Most laptops have a mute function too eg this Toshiba uses Fn+Esc to mute/unmute the sound.)

[Sanzrao]

Informative post, thanks..