What are these weird pop ups???

[Brother Derfel]

I am not sure when these started, but I have noticed recently that while I peruse the .Org forums I get a half opened pop up box appear in the top left corner of my screen and then never load into anything.


What is this?

I know that it only happens on these forums.

I know it is not my computer as I use several at both home and school to chekc the forums out and the same happens on both.

They are begining to get anoying, anyone know what is up or also noticed it?

[katar]

got them as well http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
rather annoying, they always fail beofre they fully load, so i have absolutely no idea what they are advertising.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[Gregoshi]

It is a new feature for the avatars that you are seeing. The intent is to allow display of another (custom) avatar when you move your mouse pointer over an Org avatar. Most people don't have a custom one set up, hence the empty window. I was stumped as well at first because my Popup Stopper was going crazy and I didn't know why. I never realized how often I move the cursor over an avatar.

The feature may need some tweaking.

[ToranagaSama]

Interesting

Custom Avatar? I'd seen mention of this a couple of times, but didn't give it much thought, as nothing gets through my Pop-Up stopper, CookieWall, or Webwasher.

While we're on this subject, Greghoshi, what gives with the .org's home page? Is there some new ad feature or something?

When I go to www.totalwar.org, I get a relatively blank black page with two lines of text, nothing else:

The Org is brought to you by:
Continue to the Org

I click to continue to the Org, but it just brings me to the same page. I had to create a shortcut to bring me directly to the Forums Page (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi). Consequently, I haven't viewed the Org's Home Page for about a week or more.

Curious.

[Gregoshi]

I don't know Toranaga, maybe our host doesn't have an advertiser for us. I've no idea though as I'm as uninformed as to our arrangements with the host. That screen only display for less than a second for me - I can bearly read the screen before it moves on the the Org home page...which I rarely see as I come straight to the forums.

I'm going to have to change my Popup stopper. Currently it changes the mouse pointer as a visual aid to let you know it killed a popup. But it also makes the pointer inactive for about 1-2 seconds, so I find myself waiting for the pointer to return to normal.

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

The custom avatar feature has been added about 2 weeks ago.

There are two major wishes: uniformity in avatars and custom avatars. By adding some code and a new skin, both wishes can be granted. The mouseover feature was added 2 days ago. I understand that it is a 'bit' of an annoyance too, my fault and I'm sorry.

The code has been changed, right now you have to click on an avatar to see the custom avatar. Using the CustomAvatar skin does display the custom avatar right away.

One also has to manually close the new window now. The mouse out does generate an java error in case the window didn't excist. I could try a few other options. Feedback is highly appreciated.

The host added a new type of add. In fact two. One is an inline banner that replaces the one that was previously used (no idea whether that one generated any money nor where that went to). The new inline banner overrides the normal Telefragged pop-up. The other is an takeover add, the host mailed me about it:

I'm letting you know that we're starting to run takeover ads on some of our hosted sites. Basically, a takeover ad occurs once a day for each visitor to your site, and that visitor is taken to a full screen ad before being redirected back to your site.

It means an extra wait of some 5 seconds every 24 hours.

Edit: removed the mouseout.

[ToranagaSama]

Thanks for the info Tosa, just as I suspected.

Don't know why these people think Pop-Ups and Takeovers are effective--they're not I hate em. Banner ads are much better. I, like many, ignore most, but have read a few that've caught my attetion and actually have clicked through several over the years.

AT a couple of sites, particularly the .org, I would allow the pop-up, figuring the view helped support the site, but after awhile it just became too annonying. On my system the pop-up would take tooooo long to pop-up. I've got Cable so the few seconds it took to appear seemed like an eternity. If you ever convo with the org's host, might want to suggest they speed up code that loads the pop-ups.

Re Custom Avatar....ahhh....Java No wonder, on my main system Java isn't working properly. Credit that to an attempt to install one of Microsoft's Special Paks. Those things create more problems than they're worth. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

Gregoshi, here's a direct link to an excellent and free Pop-up Stopper by Analog X. Additionally, you may wish to check out the rest of the site, lots of other good and useful software at the site too:

POW (http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/pow.htm)

[Brother Derfel]

Quote[/b] (ToranagaSama @ July 09 2003,15:11)]Gregoshi, here's a direct link to an excellent and free Pop-up Stopper by Analog X. Additionally, you may wish to check out the rest of the site, lots of other good and useful software at the site too:

POW (http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/pow.htm)
I used a Pop-Up stoper once.

It would issue a little pop up evertime it stoped a pop-up. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pissed.gif

Needless to sya i got rid of it...

[TosaInu]

Java. I was forced to use java because of the mouseover. Since that one is skipped right now, I could return to the html code.

The custom avatar is normally visible when skin7 is used.

[Portuguese Rebel]

Quote[/b] ]It would issue a little pop up evertime it stoped a pop-up.

Ain't that a usefull thing. You got to keep yourself informed of the software admirable work http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[frogbeastegg]

I can second Pow, it's a very handy popup squasher. You barely know it's working, the popups disappear as soon as they start to load. You can pick which popups get crushed, so it can be updated easily. The only problem I've encountered so far is it will shut down the System Shock 2 rebirth site even though it's not on the list. Also windows washer pro (anti popup software advertised in a popup, bizarre) popup adds cause IE to shut down if they are added to the list, so I close those manually. It's free so I guess you can't expect perfection. It's definitely worth a go if you are sick of popups. I've got over 200 different popups on my 'kill on sight' list http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Gregoshi]

Thanks for the link Toranaga. I'll take a look at their stuff. I did take care of my issue by turning off the mouse pointer flash and I'm happy for the moment.