Cool future browser feature....

R

Richard Cornford

Neredbojias said:
Oh, absolutely true. My only thought here was to establish the
facility to open another window, not to confirm the presence of a
popup blocker specifically. Why would the distinction make any
difference?

The distinction is mostly a matter of understanding the meaning of the
results of a test. Or making the test that answers the question you want
answered.

The question is usually (in my experience) formulated as "is the user
operating a pop-up blocker", and there is no test that will answer that
question. There are tests that may be able to confirm the viability of
opening pop-ups. They are a little more involved than you described, and
the timeout issue (how long you wait for the confirmation) is
significant if you want an accurate result and a responsive UI.

Richard.
 
S

solitaire

Travis said:
You know what would be a great browser feature? If the browser could
tell the web page if thee is a popup blocker running.

The page opens, tests for the existance of the pop up blocker, and
takes the appropriate action with the links.

Of course the "anti-popup for any reason" crowd won't think this would
be a cool feature...

Why would that be cool? Anyone who hosts popups on their sites is a waste of
bandwidth anyway.
 
N

Neredbojias

With neither quill nor qualm, Richard Cornford quothed
The question is usually (in my experience) formulated as "is the user
operating a pop-up blocker", and there is no test that will answer that
question. There are tests that may be able to confirm the viability of
opening pop-ups. They are a little more involved than you described, and
the timeout issue (how long you wait for the confirmation) is
significant if you want an accurate result and a responsive UI.

Well, it's easy enough to determine if the user has javascript activated
and a window won't open. Perhaps that's not *absolute* proof of a
popup-blocker, but, hey, I'll bet it's accurate 99+% of the time. And
it's surely a valid programming technique.
 
R

Richard Cornford

Neredbojias said:
With neither quill nor qualm, Richard Cornford quothed

Well, it's easy enough to determine if the user has
javascript activated and a window won't open.

You may say that but I have seen dozens of proposed examples of pop-up
blocker detectors (all actually not-pop-up bocker detectors with the
false assumption applied to the result) but none have ever taken account
of the full range of behaviour exhibited by pop-up blockers. And so all
of those examples would potentially error-out, either preventing the
completion of the test or producing false positive, or negative,
results.

Which is not to say that such a script could not be written to be
reliable, just that the individuals who are interested in creating such
scripts either don't research the issues sufficiently to see how they
should be implementing their test, or that they don't know how to
program their testes in a robust way (or a combination of the two).

One of the obvious problems with the creation of a good
not-pop-up-blocker detector is that the more experienced script authors
have figured out how they can get the pop-up effects and benefits
without trying to open new browser windows and so have no further
interest in detecting pop-up blockers. That leaves only relative novices
writing the detection scripts, and that is evident in the results.
Perhaps that's not *absolute* proof of a popup-blocker,
but, hey, I'll bet it's accurate 99+% of
the time.

It still depends on what it is you are trying to do. If it is a question
of verifying the viability of using pop-ups in a UI then the 'confirm
when loaded' strategy is 100% accurate. If you are planning to tell the
user that they must disable their pop-up blocker then the percentage who
never were running a pop-up blocker are going to think you a fool when
you ask them to turn it off. Some people don't mind their users thinking
them a fool, other would rather avoid giving that impression. (It might
be argues that the first group actually are fools, so fair enough)

It is probably a combination of experiences and personality but when I
create a test I don't want to get 99% of the answer.
And it's surely a valid programming technique.

That probably depends a lot on what you are programming, though I cannot
think of many tasks where a 1% failure rate would get past QA. And there
is no point writing code that will be rejected and need to be re-done
when you can be certain that is going to happen before writing it.

Richard.
 
T

Travis Newbury

solitaire said:
Why would that be cool? Anyone who hosts popups on their sites is a waste of
bandwidth anyway.

You have a very limited view of what the web can be used for.
 
N

Noozer

Travis Newbury said:
You have a very limited view of what the web can be used for.

You have ONE browser window. If you can't present your ideas within that
window then I'm not interested.
 
T

Travis Newbury

Noozer said:
You have ONE browser window. If you can't present your ideas within that
window then I'm not interested.

Fine, it's your browser, do with it what you want.
 
N

Neredbojias

With neither quill nor qualm, Richard Cornford quothed
You may say that but I have seen dozens of proposed examples of pop-up
blocker detectors (all actually not-pop-up bocker detectors with the
false assumption applied to the result) but none have ever taken account
of the full range of behaviour exhibited by pop-up blockers. And so all
of those examples would potentially error-out, either preventing the
completion of the test or producing false positive, or negative,
results.

Well, in order to continue and enhance this discussion profitably, I
have to do some tests of my own and to be honest with you I just don't
care (i.e. I'm too lazy said:
It still depends on what it is you are trying to do. If it is a question
of verifying the viability of using pop-ups in a UI then the 'confirm
when loaded' strategy is 100% accurate. If you are planning to tell the
user that they must disable their pop-up blocker then the percentage who
never were running a pop-up blocker are going to think you a fool when
you ask them to turn it off.

I still say how can you have javascript active yet be unable to open a
window except the obvious? But... said:
Some people don't mind their users thinking
them a fool, other would rather avoid giving that impression.

It never bothered me.
That probably depends a lot on what you are programming, though I cannot
think of many tasks where a 1% failure rate would get past QA. And there
is no point writing code that will be rejected and need to be re-done
when you can be certain that is going to happen before writing it.

I'll admit there might be bugs in the absolute deduction of my position,
but what program is 100% bug-free? None of them are, that's what.
Anyway, I wouldn't bet my soul on it working perfectly.
 
N

Neredbojias

With neither quill nor qualm, Noozer quothed
You have ONE browser window. If you can't present your ideas within that
window then I'm not interested.

Ah, but what if one has a *very large*, uh, appurtenance to present??
 
N

Noozer

Neredbojias said:
With neither quill nor qualm, Noozer quothed


Ah, but what if one has a *very large*, uh, appurtenance to present??

How can a popup window be any larger than my main browser window when
maximized?
 
N

Neredbojias

With neither quill nor qualm, Noozer quothed
How can a popup window be any larger than my main browser window when
maximized?

It can, in a way. A main browser window has borders or at least a top-
bar. Some of my popups were borderless and barless true-fullscreen
windows displaying nothing but content. Ergo, the inner dimensions were
larger, exactly equal to the outer dimensions of a normally maximized
window. In other words, no crap.
 

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