NRO and Popup Hell

by Little Miss Attila on November 10, 2010

I just don’t get this: every time I go to NRO, I get a popup ad that doesn’t have a close button. It’s a fundraising appeal, and the only way to get rid of it is to click on it, see the appeal come up in article format, figure out that this is wrong, close that window (or did I hit the “previous” button?) and get to where you wanted to get in the first place.

The process is irritating enough to make them unlinkable, because I don’t want readers to have to go through the process.

Ugh. Let me know if I’m being too harsh.

{ 1 trackback }

Breakfast Scramble (Monday)
November 15, 2010 at 2:02 am

{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }

retriever November 10, 2010 at 2:19 pm

OMG That sucks! I will NEVER go there again. I avoid sites with popups, and those with too many ads as it is, but that was horrific. Didn’t open it, just closed the window.

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retriever November 10, 2010 at 2:19 pm

Do you want to know how I really feel???

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ponce November 10, 2010 at 4:55 pm

I see the “close” button below the lower right corner of the ad.

I’m using Firefox.

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DaveH November 10, 2010 at 8:45 pm

The close button shows up in IE8 too. Bottom Right.

Just hitting the escape button works as well.

Still, it is very much an annoyance and they should not have it show up on every @#$% page. I am rural and my only option is satellite. Better than dialup but not much and if I exceed a 30 window for downloading, I get throttled. All of this scripting, flash, autorun media etc… makes this a delicate balancing act.

Makes me want to go back to the original HTML specs and using NOTEPAD to build my web pages…

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DaveH November 10, 2010 at 8:47 pm

“30 window” should read “30 day window”

Long day (seems like 35 or 40 at least…)

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Brian November 10, 2010 at 9:18 pm

Try hitting reload/refresh.

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Foxfier November 10, 2010 at 11:05 pm

White “[X]” on the bottom right, chrome.

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retriever November 11, 2010 at 5:29 am

Dodo bird here…Don’t use Chrome yet…Alternate between Safari and Firefox on a small Mac laptop (if I have to scroll around too much to avoid the ads on a site, I don’t go back..) This kind of obnoxious ad may end up biting some sites as people are going primarily mobile now. Not only is it annoying avoiding such nonsense, but as mobile data plans get limited, people will refuse to waste their precious bandwidth on them. It’s one thing if you work at home and stare at a glorious 27 inch LED display all day. For for the rest of us? The move has been first to laptops from desktops, then to smartphones, and now to tablets.

On a marginally related topic, tho I snarl at Jobs’ control freak tendencies, one good thing about iPads and iPhones not doing flash is that it filters out a lot of !@#$ on sites. Which is bad news for advertisers and good news for readers. Altho now ads are twining their way onto the Apps too…

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Chris Wysocki November 11, 2010 at 12:51 pm

Totally and completely annoying.

Just another example of how Rich Lowry is ruining National Review.

NRO, RIP.

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Leah November 11, 2010 at 6:50 pm

Had the same issue, thanks for the suggestions, but no, I wouldn’t link to them – that is beyond obnoxious.

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jc November 11, 2010 at 8:37 pm

I was worried about you for a little while there, Joy – kept getting “abandoned website” referrals. Iffa youda told me Ida checked the damn sofa coushions.
Nice ti see you back. Still getting used to all the jump pages. Really don’t know if I like the two-column format. Looks more “officially journalistic”. I suppose.
CTL+ for embiggen loses text in the margins sometimes, and sometimes ends up
with two
word
sentances
which can
v\be very
hard to follow
in a
serious piece.
Or maybe I should just break down and spend the roughly 3 grand asked for the lasik and the cataract.
But first I must repair my bicycle.

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Texan99 November 13, 2010 at 7:50 am

Incredibly annoying. The close button doesn’t show up in Safari. I was clicking on the message, then immediately hitting “back,” but I’ll try the “refresh” gambit instead.

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