What is a Pop-up?

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Pop-ups are small windows that appear to “pop-up” suddenly and without warning in the foreground of your screen. Pop-ups are automatically triggered by actions such as clicking on a link, entering a URL (website), refreshing your browser or sometimes they just pop up anytime.

Although they can be used for useful purposes like displaying a message or as a form of data entry point, they can be used for unsolicited advertisement and promotions. Browsers can be set to allow or block pop-ups but since some systems require the use of pop-ups, knowing when and how to block them is essential.

Blocking Pop-ups – To block pop-ups, on your Internet Explorer browser’s main menu, select:

1. “Tools”
2. “Internet Options…”,
3. Click the “Privacy” tab then
4. Check the “Block pop-ups” checkbox.
5. Click ” OK “

NOTE: In some browser versions you can also Turn On/Off the pop-up blocker by selecting the “Pop-up Blocker” option from directly under the “Tools” menu.

Allowing Pop-ups – (There are lots of pop-up blockers available from sites like Yahoo, MSN and AOL but Internet Explorer v 6.0 comes pre-installed with a pop-up blocker. This tip only shows you how to enable the pre-installed pop-up blocker available on Internet Explorer so you if you have other pop-up blockers installed, you might need to disable them separately.)

To allow pop-ups, on your Internet Explorer browser’s main menu, select:

1. “Tools”
2. ” Internet Options… ”
3. Click the “Privacy ” tab then
4. Un-check the “Block pop-ups” checkbox.
5. Click “OK”

Managing Pop-ups – Even though you may choose to block pop-ups, you can still specify some sites from which to allow pop-ups. For example, MIX requires that your browser allows pop-ups. To do this, on your Internet Explorer browser’s main menu, select:

  1. “Tools”
  2. “Internet Options… ”
  3. Click the “Privacy” tab then
  4. Click the “Settings…” button (note that this button will be disabled if you chose to allow pop-ups by un-checking the “Block pop-ups” box)
    1. Under the “Exceptions” section, enter the URL of the website from which you wish to allow pop-ups(...in this case you could enter www.mix.wvu.edu or just *.wvu.edu, which allows pop-ups from any WVU site including mix);
    2. Next, click the “Add” button. (This adds the site to a list of sites from which pop-ups are allowed).
    3. To remove a site from this list, click on the site in the “Allowed sites:” section below and then click the “Remove” button on the right.
    4. To remove all sites, click the “Remove All ” button.

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