| Abstract:
Certain web sites may require your web browser to allow “pop-up” windows. These sites should only require this operation if the site’s design cannot display the information in an organized way or for security reasons. Pop-up advertising was made popular because default installations of Internet Explorer did not contain the ability to block them. Advertisers recognized that the end user was almost required to look at the advertising. In the end, not all pop-up windows are bad, but they were a conduit for abuse.
By default in both Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, a site is allowed to pop-up information from its own domain when a user clicks a link from one of its pages. There are other rules involved here, and a user can configure his/her browser for a customized pop-up experience. This document explains how to view these sites allowing for pop-up windows to open.
Once you have come across a site which requires a pop-up window, it will be up to you to decide whether this pop-up will be used for additional functionality. The web site in this case study actually determines if your browser is capable of displaying pop-up windows and will not allow the user to continue using the site until pop-ups are allowed. There are two examples for Firefox web browser as you may come across two different situations.
This is a case where the pop-up windows allow greater functionality.
This document is separated in two sections depending on web browser, Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Mozilla Firefox:
1. Open Firefox.
a. Double click the icon from the desktop or click the icon from the quick launch bar or Start menu.
b. Visit a web page that requests to open an unauthorized pop-up window.
c. Example is http://espn.go.com/.
i. The ESPN website did not check the browsers capabilities, and just tried to open the pop-up. Firefox displayed a warning at the top of the window.
2. Allow the website to display the pop-up window using the Tools menu.
a. Click the Tools menu and choose Options.
b. When the Options window opens, click Web Features on the left navigation bar. Then click Allowed Sites from the right frame.
c. When the allowed sites window opens enter the site you would like to allow to open pop-up windows, then click Allow. For the brookscole website this address should be “ilrn.com”. You can find this address from the address bar on the browser window.
d. The newly allowed site will be listed under Site, as shown below:
e. Reload the web page in the browser window and this page will function properly. Click the reload icon on the browser to reload the page.
3. Allow the website to display the pop-up window using the information bar.
a. When the information bar is displayed in Firefox, you can click it to get a set of available options.
b. Click on the information bar and in this case choose Allow popups for espn.go.com.
c. The browser will automatically reload and any pop-up from the page will not be blocked.
Microsoft Internet Explorer:
1. Open Internet Explorer.
a. Double click the icon from the desktop or click the icon from the quick launch bar or Start menu.
2. Visit a web page that requests to open an unauthorized pop-up window.
a. If you have access, go to http://bca.brookscole.com/ and login. If you don’t have access, there are other pages that will check for browser capabilities.
i. The brookscole website does a system capabilities check and recognizes that it cannot open pop-up windows automatically.
ii. Internet Explorer sees that the System Check is trying to open a pop-up window and it displays its Information Bar. This may look as above or if this is the first time you have seen the information bar it would open the dialog box below. Click OK if you see this dialog.
3. Allow the website to display the pop-up window using the information bar.
a. When the information bar is displayed in Internet Explorer, you can click it to get a set of available options. You can choose to Temporarily Allow Pop-ups for this time only, or Always Allow Pop-ups from This Site…
b. A confirmation window will open.
c. Click Yes and the page will automatically refresh.
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