Advertisement behavior (front page)

yazirian

Action: Clicked on one of the sponsor advertisement banners on the front page.

Expected: Taken to the sponsor's website, or failing that, sponsor's website opens in a new window/tab in browser.

What happened: "Firefox prevented this site from opening a pop-up window."

What I did: Well, I sure didn't visit that sponsor, I can assure you of that.

Notes: This behavior may be specific to certain banners. I was unable to replicate the pop-up blocking behavior with Blizzard advertisements; it just went to their website, as expected. I DID get pop-up blocks from opening at least: Mabinogi, MapleStory, Reset Generation.

BahamutZERO

Sounds like the pop-up blocker is doing its job? Heh. I assume you're mentioning this because certain ads triggering a pop-up blocker when they're not really creating any pop-ups seems like a bug? This doesn't happen for me in Firefox 3.0.1, but I also have the penny-arcade.com domain whitelisted.

Satan.

Funny how a popup blocker works. Turn it off, and you should be golden. Different companies use code in different ways. Blizzard (or their advertising partner) apparently knows how to sidestep the popup blocker properly.

japan

I have mine set to "Block unwanted Popups", which basically means it doesn't block popup links that you actually clicked.

Satan.

japan wrote: »

I have mine set to "Block unwanted Popups", which basically means it doesn't block popup links that you actually clicked.

It does that to an extent. Like I said, it's all in the way said popups are coded (that is, how the code instructs the browser to behave when you go *click*).

For a slightly related example: If you go to Google Reader, highlight and item and press 'v' on your keyboard (shortcut to open original story) you end up with a popup block message in Firefox unless you've already authorized Firefox to let google.com popup on you. Firefox doesn't understand that because I pressed 'v' I actually want a popup to fire.

yazirian

The issue from the perspective of a website attempting to sell ads, however, is that a popular browser that people actually use comes out of the box, by default, configured in a way that will prevent people from viewing the ads. If the links were simply of either the standard site-exiting sort, or open-in-new-window sort, they would immediately begin to work for everyone regardless of their personal interest in configuring browsers, or their feelings on the matter of pop-ups.

From an ad revenue standpoint it makes a lot more sense to fix the issue than to hope people actually go through the steps of whitelisting for pop-ups, rather than simply failing to care enough (as I did) and just not following the ad link. Which is why I'm reporting it as a bug -- I'm willing to bet that somebody who loses money when ads aren't followed probably cares about default browser settings preventing ads from being followed because the ads are presented in a certain, arguably incorrect, manner.

The Blizzard ad is not sidestepping the pop-up blocking in any way. It is a direct link. As God Intended(tm).

BahamutZERO

I think he meant something more like "avoiding tripping over" than "sidestepping" the pop-up blocker.