Popups

Popups are evil. Period.

I can accept that some sites use popup windows for navigation, like opening an option window for downloads while keeping the original page in the main window. Sometimes this makes sense. But I have no tolerance at all for popup advertisements.

Sure, we all have to get used to the idea that the concept of the ’free internet’ is becoming more and more an idea of the past. Serverspace and bandwidth cost. Professional design doesn’t come cheap either. And since the internet has turned to a communication and entertainment tool for the masses in the late nineties the resources have become more valuable, and consequently more expensive. In the near future we will experience more often that services will be offered only for some form of compensation. cddb, for example, just recently changed their license regulations for applications to access their database which basically made cddb unaffordable for smaller freeware or shareware programs.
Ads in various forms are common for commercial websites. I don’t like them (because essentially 99% are plain uninteresting) but in many cases I don’t mind them, provided they’re integrated welll into the page layout. But popups are a different animal. I consider them annoying up to being dangerous. Annoying because I have to close them manually. It’s harder - by nature - to ignore them (which doesn’t mean I’d pay one bit more attention to their content - I don’t). But more than that, they require system resources for generating the new window, they clutter the taskbar and often enough they carry mechanisms to get the focus to get on top of other windows.
It get’s worse, though. Some popups are programmed to call new popup windows when being closed. If you are really unlucky you find yourself stuck within a loop of popup windows you can’t get rid off without killing the browser itself. And a so-called popup-hell can by all means shoot down a weaker system just by occupying too many resources.

So while I accept advertisement in general I don’t accept such an annoying and often aggressive ad-carrier like popups. IMO is just another form of spam. And it’s really a shame when it gets so far that services are coupled with popups (I once visited a forum which only opened its threads when it was allowed to generate a popup. And it generated an additional popup each time you opened a thread. BLEH).

So now GSI has decided to start using popups as well. There have been integrated ads for some time now, but apparently those are not making enough money for good ol’ GSI. So they went for stage 2. Interestingly enough the popup (yes, we are talking of a single popup window here) doesn’t appear when opening the PF mainpage. It’s hooked on the forums. Interesting because it indicates that GSI does not want to use popups on main pages (afraid of the negative image? afraid to scare away ’new customers’?) but rather use them on the already established community. Makes sense in a way, to make money from people actively using the site (in that case the forums). On the other hand I’ve always taken the view that it’s the community which makes the quality (or lack thereof) of a forum. Without a good community a forum is nothing! So I don’t quite agree in being annoyed by popups when I consider myself being one of those making the forums a quality place in the first place (granted, I did so more in the past than today, but the point still stands).

Okay, why so much fuss about a single popup? Simply because I don’t trust GSI. Regardless if that one popup does earn them much money or not enough money, I expect them to follow this road further if they see any kind of prospect in it. In that regard I consider GSI ruthless. Maybe it’s a second popup in three months, maybe the single popup refreshes more often. But I expect something like this to happen in the future.

I can perfectly understand that GSI is trying to make money. But I’d rather see them creating and selling more attractive and more intelligent services and applications to earn money. FilePlanet has always been unattractive because it was slow as hell. Don’t know if it’s still today, I stopped using it over a year ago (and I was sickened from the concept of ’Personal Server’ from the start because a) it seemed just as a poor excuse to make money with a service others offer for free, and b) I suspect that GSI is consequently shifting resources from the free servers to the personal servers to sell this ’service’).
Same with ForumPlanet. One can argue about the forum-design, but the slowness is just annoying. I don’t know if it’s a problem with the database or if the server is just crap, but the last few days the forums take almost minutes to buildup and to navigate (and in fact I’m unable to load it at all at the moment).
Or let’s just look at GameSpy3D: I bought it 3 years ago when I started playing online heavily. In those 3 years GSI has only created one major update for GS3D, all other updates were basically for integrating support for new games. And actually calling that one update ’major’ isn’t doing that word any justice. The interface hasn’t changed at all and to my knowledge no new functionality has been added in three years (though recently it appears as if GS3D would recognize reserved slots, which it didn’t before ...). IMHO there is still a lot which could be improved on GS3D, which maybe would result in more buyers. But apparently GSI prefers the easy way.

Oh, and one more thing: As I understand it GSI has permitted to promote or even discuss the use of popup-killers on the forums. This, my dear GSI, is not only censorship but also so narrow-minded that it defies description. Yes, your forums - your rules. Take that rule and shove it up your butt. Until now the rules were there to improve the community. But this rule (which actually isn’t even an official rule) only serves to protect your interests of molesting your visitors with your popup-ad.
I, for one, will not accept this. So for anybody looking for popup-killer I recommend this site which links to a number of freeware and shareware applications to counter popups.

PS: I finished this editorial at the time stated above. But I couldn’t update the Fort because I was unable to access the FTP server for more than two days! During that time (and even before) PF as well as the PF-forums on ForumPlanet were basically inaccessible (read: slow as hell). Right now it’s Tuesday, 2310z and finally I can access the Fort-files as usual. No idea what the error was, but be asured that I’m impressed