Sneaky popups at Fairfax
The Age and SMH web sites have seen the writing on the wall for popup adverts, with browser popup blockers now blocking most ads that don’t occur as a result of direct user action.
So you know what they’ve done? Triggered a popup if you happen to click on part of an article window which normally wouldn’t be considered clickable, such as on a non-hyperlinked word. It’s a user action, so the popup gets around the blocker. It only seems to be triggered to happen occasionally though, so you don’t notice how the popup is triggered. Sneaky.
Anyone else notice that if you leave THE AGE website alone, it will repeatedly reload itself?
I use Firefox, and I always notice that green bar firing up. It even happens as I’m reading it.
The autoreloading you see on The Age comes from the tag in the head section; it says reload the page every five mintues. The Age website is dynamic, not static, and they want you to be reading the latest news. And ads.