RE: PopUp Windows / New Windows

I don't believe we can rely on browsers to manage the misused/overuse/use of
popup windows.  Consider that all browsers (to my experience) come with
Javascript turned on, and that Mozilla and Opera now have these facilities
to control by demand, as there is now a market for IE plugins to control
this behaviour.

Now consider that the users who know about these features and products are
your more knowledgeable users.  What about all the people who don't know how
these things can be controlled?  They are at the mercy of popups everywhere,
and they don't know that they can be controlled.  They never consider this
there are such options, they just experience the web in its raw form.

I don't feel we should ever abandon clearly stating accessibility standards,
even if we feel that User Agents are putting features in place to control
them.  The accessibility standards, I feel are excellent standards for all
wed developers, if at a minimum it at least reminds them how others may
experience (or not experience) their content.

There was also a discussion about Javascript in this thread, about there
being Javascript code or not, like calls to the onclick event.  Maybe there
should be more clarification in the documentation in this case referring
directly to manipulation of DOM objects, properties, methods and events, so
that everyone is more clear about the embedded DOM engine in browsers that
they are dealing with, or in browsers that do not have them (Lynx... I'm
making an assumption on this).

Geoff


-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On Behalf
Of Charles McCathieNevile
Sent: Monday, 16 September 2002 5:43 PM
To: John Foliot - bytown internet
Cc: Jim Ley; w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: PopUp Windows / New Windows


This little gem, buried in the middle, brings us closer to some really
useful
answers to the original question, as I understand it. The question is, can
we
rely on browsers (rather than the way content is authored) to stop users
having a new window opened and confusing them?.

So if Mozilla and Opera can suppress the new windows (do they open them at
all, or does the user just lose that window) and iCab can stop scripts from
openeing new windows (either in general, or with the exception that it is
allowed for user interaction), and Home Page Reader alerts the user that a
New Window opened, are we getting to the point anticipated in the guidelines
where browsers do the right thing and authors suggeting a new window are
readily overridden by users who don't want one?

Keep that data coming...

cheers

Chaals

On Sun, 15 Sep 2002, John Foliot - bytown internet wrote:

>Back to the JavaScript example, with the explosion of "anti pop-up"
software
>out there (Popup Killer - www.stopzilla.com, Popup Zapper -
>www.versiontracker.com, BanPopup - www.oiisoft.com/BanPopup, PopUpCop -
>www.popupcop.com, ...need I go on?)  Clearly many mainstream users dislike
>this behaviour, as witnessed by the softwares above and others like it.
And
>none of these softwares (that I'm aware of) recognize "good" popups .vs
>"bad" popups.  Even User agents themselves are getting into the act: Opera
>allows users to configure the browser to not open Popups, Mozilla allows
the
>user to disallow opening a link in a new window. I would question the
wisdom
>of relying on this to present ANY data via web delivery.

Received on Thursday, 19 September 2002 23:39:31 UTC