Yet another new promising popup blocker

A

Aaron

For those of you still hunting for a popup blocker for IE (i.e people not
using proxomitron,adshield,freesurfer,endlesspop, myie2 etc), here's a
relatively new one to consider that I like a lot.

Smart Popup Killer

http://www.firstnetsoft.com/

This appears to be freeware, at least according to the license, and
download.com


1)Residing on system Tray with an icon, easy to use, light to your system's
resource.

Like most popup blockers today it is implemented as a BHO, which runs and
popups in the system tray whenever IE is loaded. (You can hence temporaily
deactivate it from loading with IE by renaming the BHO manually or using
bhodaemon).

There appears to be no way to turn off the system tray (sorry guys I know
some of you will hate this) while using it though. It does appear to be
lighter then freesurfer, adshield in terms of memory usage, but the feature
set differs so it's not directly comparable anyway.


2)Compatible with IE5.01/5.5/6.0

That's right IE only.

3)Block unsolicited pop-ups.
4)Block pop-under ads.

It is listed on http://www.popup-killer-review.com/index.html as the best
non-payware popup blocker. Mainly because it has the ability to block
"unfathered popup" , ie popups spawned by adware like Gator.

This might be interesting if you use adware products , but I didnt test it.


Smart Popup killer has 4 settings - block All, block high, block default
and block low.

I tested it on the following sites as well

http://www.popuptest.com/popuphome.html
http://www.webknacks.com/aptest.htm
http://www.popup-purger.com/test2.html

It doesn't block everything, but still I was highly impressed.IMHO it's
slightly ahead of the usual freeware favourites (it also appears to block
tricks that try to move/alter your browser window as well as just pure
popups). But then again, most of these tests are highly theortical, and few
of such popup tricks are "in the wild".

I recommend Block High, since it seems to be the best combination of
useability and security. Block All, catches just about everything, but at
the cost of useability.

5)Block Messenger popup spams for Windows XP/2000/NT.

Well perhaps not too useful. Many people would either have blocked
messanger spam with their firewall, or just disenabled it.

6)Allow List to allow trusted pop-ups.

It uses whitelist only. No black lists. I suppose the idea is to use this
together with the "block all" settings as well as the hotkeys to allow
popups. You have to manually enter the url of the whitelist though.

7)Save internet bandwidth by blocking pop-ups without loading.

A few popup blockers, (Popup manager comes to mind) actually close the
popup (as opposed to not loading it at all) a few split seconds after it
loads, so you might notice a flicker if there are many at the same time.
This one doesnt do that of course.

8)Hotkey to temporarily allow popup windows.

Pretty standard feature, the cltrl key. Not customisable though.


9)Sound notification on blocking.

You can switch this off.

10)Automatically clean cookies to protect privacy online.

A bonus. But unlikely a reason to use it.


Conclusion

Like many freeware catgories (for example spam filtering), there are many
excellent alternatives, and Smart popup blocker is at least first among
equals.

Besides my impression is that unlike spammers, websites that use popups are
not yet fighting back against popup blockers so most popup blockers are
equally effective, so any differences in performance of popup blockers on
test sites are moot (For example, almost none of the freeware popup
blockers for IE I have seen can do noththing about popups spawned by VB,
that will bypass almost 100% of all popup blockers and it's easy to do.).




Aaron
 
B

Bill Day

2)Compatible with IE5.01/5.5/6.0

That's right IE only.

I am getting royally tired of apps which assume IE is the only game in
town and need it to work, and I have sworn I will not use them--even if
they brew my coffee and shine my shoes and tell me how handsome I am.

I don't usually grump at 'em like this...but sometimes..*sigh*
 
D

DC

I am getting royally tired of apps which assume IE is the only game in
town and need it to work, and I have sworn I will not use them--even if
they brew my coffee and shine my shoes and tell me how handsome I am.

I don't usually grump at 'em like this...but sometimes..*sigh*

If it is any consolation, IE is prolly the *only* browser on Earth that
*needs* this type of add-on.

I spit on their lowly popup blockers!! Bwahahahaha!!!1!1 };O)
 
B

Blinky the Shark

Bill said:
On 13 Sep 2003 23:32:31 +0800, Aaron <[email protected]>
wrote:
I am getting royally tired of apps which assume IE is the only game in
town and need it to work, and I have sworn I will not use them--even if
they brew my coffee and shine my shoes and tell me how handsome I am.

Well, the other browsers don't *need* all this bolt-on crap. :)
 
B

Blinky the Shark

Melinda said:
Blinky the Shark wrote:
I use Netscape 7 and I need it there.

Try unckecking permission for scripts to open unrequested windows.

(Suggestion based on Mozilla, whicy NS is based on before AOL adds the AOL
crap.)
 
M

Melinda Meahan - take out TRASH to reply

Blinky said:
Try unckecking permission for scripts to open unrequested windows.

(Suggestion based on Mozilla, whicy NS is based on before AOL adds
the AOL crap.)

Yeah, but it doesn't work on Netscape -- I already tried it. Don't ask
me why, though.
 
B

Blinky the Shark

Melinda said:
Blinky the Shark wrote:
Yeah, but it doesn't work on Netscape -- I already tried it. Don't ask
me why, though.

Melinda, someone came up with this, and posted it to *me* -- I'm quoting
it here as an second response to *you*, in hopes that that will increase
the chances of you seeing it:


The NS page gives you a little file that restores pop-up blocking to 7.0. (It
actually sounds like it's just adding some stuff to your normal prefs.js file.)
 
M

Melinda Meahan - take out TRASH to reply

Blinky said:
Melinda, someone came up with this, and posted it to *me* -- I'm quoting
it here as an second response to *you*, in hopes that that will increase
the chances of you seeing it:

Thanks. I see all the posts on newsgroups, so I already caught it.
Thanks so much for being so considerate.
 
3

|3iff //ullins

Smart Popup Killer
this program appears to be nagware/shareware. here's one of the user
comments regarding it:

"Bait and switch fom free to charge

Originally stated program is free. The program works well but I began
to get notices that I had to pay if I wanted to continue to use the
program. This is blatantly bait and switch and a poor business
practice so even though I like th eprogram I will not buy it because
of principle. I will not buy from any company that behaves
unethically."
 

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