Re: Popup Blocker UI

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinout cs vu nl>]

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, Adam Hooper wrote:

> | Question: what's the rationale for showing that icon on the statusbar
> | instead of the notification area, like the download notification icon?
>
> That's an interesting idea. One important reason: popups are really a
> webpage-specific thing. If you've got 5 browser windows open, each with
> 2 tabs with 2 popups,

Using tabs and a statusbar icon already breaks the
webpage-"specificity"(sp?) of the popup blocker, unless you'd alter the
content of the menu depending on which tab has focus.

> would you want 5 separate menus with 2 entries or one menu with 20
> entries?

I suppose you could put tabs in submenus, but I'd have to see this in
action to be sure it's a good solution.

> something important, for example, I'd *expect* the notification area to
> have an icon -- and it could be blocking some part of my important
> research but I'd never notice because I'd assume the blocked popups are
> from the porn site.

You have a point, but then again: how many popups appear on sites that you
aren't actively browsing at that moment? Is this a common enough use case
to warrant designing features around?

> What is the typing monitor notification?

Go into your keyboard preferences and select the Typing Break tab. You'll
see. :)

> toolbar checkbox widget (it'd be a toggle button, by the way). So

I could live with that...

> whether there's a toolbar widget or not, I still need to put the option
> somewhere else as well.

If a menu item isn't good enough, and a toolbar item isn't good enough,
what's left? A panel button that, when clicked, changes your mouse cursor
into Commander Keen's raygun with which you can zap any popups you
dislike? You could even make the user chase the popups and have them
fire back for extra fun! ;-D

regards,

-- 
Reinout van Schouwen			Artificial Intelligence student
email: reinout cs vu nl			mobile phone: +31-6-44360778
                       www.eat-better.org