Forcing a new window VS "Pop ups "
or
When to use what and what is proper nettiquete ?

There seems to be confusion over these two, completely different things. One is a legitimate, band saving, navigational tactic,
the other is the bane of the Internet !

I force a new window often on my sites, for which some complain to me about having excessive " pop ups ! " Now if you call a pop up, any new window that opens automatically, you are, by your definition, right. However, there are valid and useful reasons for forcing a new window, that do not fall under the category of " pop up".


Example:
Off of a image based menu, like my Gallery thumbnail pages. It would use way too much band width, if these pages were loaded repeatedly. I found, that despite repeated requests to viewers to right click and open in a new window to view the larger image , they left clicked on the thumbnail, taking themselves away from the thumbnails, which forces a re-load of all those images on their return. So I finally forced the issue with a simple code that tells the page to open a new window for every link on it.

base target="main"

Park this in your head tags, with the proper < and > and it will force a new page for every link. Which cut my band use to less than a 1/3rd of its former levels. Do be certain however, to warn your viewer clearly that the links will do this.


When a site gets to be of any real size, or has heavy traffic because its popular, how much band is used in a day becomes important. Most Free hosts, have very limited band usage, which is where this practice of load and re load pages really hurts the site.

We have all seen," good "sites that go offline for the day, an hour, the rest of the week because they have gone over the limit of their daily or even monthly, band usage. My personal site, before I was able to go paid, would go off-line literally daily, for excessive band use.

Even paid hosts have limits on how much your allowed. Loading pages over and over, that have already been loaded once, wastes the sites band limits, and is bad nettiquete on the part of the viewer.


Ok then what about when right click is disabled ? The right click, open new window move, by the viewer, is not possible. But you don't want the viewer to HAVE to go and come back over and over, for the sake of the band used and the annoyance factor, so the forced open new page does it for them, automatically, to get around that issue.

Consider this, many people hate the no right click bit, mainly because you " can't " open a new window. A lot of people prefer to do so in order to surf. If I get on a site with no right click and I am forced to re load the menu over and over, I don't often stay. I have better things to do than wait around to reload a page over and over. Forcing a new window, allows you to have your no right click to prevent some forms of theft, yet allow your viewer to surf comfortably and spare your band usage, all at the same time.

Now, is there a legitimate use for real pop ups ? Yes, for a whole variety of things this is a perfectly legit tool. However, I would recommend to avoid a deliberate pop up of any kind, if at all possible .

It's been so over used, that everybody has a pop up killer nowadays, and will just get annoyed at you that they have to do extra stuff, to get whatever it is, to open whaterver it is. If you are going to use one for any reason, Tell the viewer that it is one BEFORE they hit the button.

Or your viewer will curse you or worse, just leave, as they figure the link is broken, if they happen to have their pop up killer set to, no notice mode. Mine shows up with a little icon when it kills a pop up, so if I am trying to open something and it won't open becuase it's a pop up, I know why. But not everyone has theirs set up this way. Most don't WANT to be informed, they just want them gone !

More soon
Esta

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