Sitepoint finds a new way to annoy
Sitepoint has some very good content: if nothing else, they employ (or, since it’s been nearly a month for Simon and three weeks for Harry, perhaps “employed”) both Simon Willison and Harry Fuecks as webloggers. But, they annoy me by very carefully bypassing Firefox’s popup blocking. They aren’t just clueless popup spewers, they do it once, and set a cookie (which has an interesting effect when you say “hey, how’d they do that?” and try to directly load the popup JavaScript) to not do it again, which I find more annoying: it’s like they know it’s wrong, they know it’s annoying and ill-mannered and doesn’t suit them, and they do it anyway.
Now, via technoweenie, I see that they are branding the middle-click autoscroll icon in Firefox. Everybody knows it’s a kludgy implementation, sticking the icon into the page’s DOM, and if anyone needed an example of how it can be abused they can always enable autoscrolling and middle-click Hixie’s blog, but here again, they knowingly exploit a bug to shove themselves even more into your face.
Sitepoint has some brilliant people, who really know their way around web technology. It’s just, sometimes, I wish they also had some people with a wee bit of sense and taste and decorum around, to keep the others in check.
I went to http://www.sitepoint.com/ with a week-old trunk build and got a ”pop-up blocked” icon, not a pop-up.
Well, I’ll be… I’d pretty much given up on clicking on anything at all on their site (come in on a link from a feed, read and leave), because they were successfully piggybacking on any click - I habitually click the content area to be sure it’s focused before I start trying to scroll, and I’d get a popup there. Dunno whether we changed, or they changed, but it certainly does seem to be safe to click (as long as you don’t middle-click to autoscroll) now.
Not safe. I get a popup if I click anything on Sitepoint. They can take their ”Do not show me this again” and shove it with the rest of the site.
This shouldn’t really bother me, since I use Opera, and Opera actually blocks the popups that Firefox or IE lets through, but it does. If I wanted popups, I would have disabled my popup blocker.
The pop-up seems to be blocked on loading the main page and doesn’t even seem to be requested when middle-clicking to load as a new tab.
It does raise its ugly head should you click the link to open links in an existing page.
But I wouldn’t lose any sleep over that scroll icon, I don’t see any problem with their customisation.
Sitepoint Annoys
Nefarious tactics to subvert smart web users, praise you will not recieve, only complaints.
I get no popups at all using Mozilla 1.7.5.
I use the Adblock extension, so I’ve just bunged their popup URL into it and all seems well… for the moment.
You’re absolutely right, though; knowingly bypassing pop-up blocking, as Sitepoint do, is poor form.
When I first noticed it I thought it was cool. I wouldn’t go anywhere close to saying they’re pushing it into my face, it’s just making an improvement on the standard/ugly icon, and it fits the page a lot better.
Also, in regards to the popup - while I agree they shouldn’t be avoiding popup blockers, it’s their own newsletter, not some flashy screensaver ad, making it slightly less obtrusive.
Learned something new about Sitepoint today
No, it’s not new to hear someone complaining about popups. I’ve never noticed the middle-click autoscroll icon before, though. I think it’s very slick. It accomplishes nothing, but it’s slick nonetheless. Nothing I’d waste effort doing on my o…
Oohs and ahhs
Eric’s trying to get everyone to post, so I’ll just chime in with a few links for now. If you’re planning to create a website, and you want to get a few oohs and ahhs from the audience, try these tips and tricks.