Pop-Down v1.0.3 Readme
Copyright © 2002 Matthew T. Pandina
http://home.rochester.rr.com/artcfox/Pop-Down/
Introduction
Pop-Down is a program written for Internet Explorer. While enabled, you will never have to deal with browser windows popping up when you are trying to surf the web again.
The trick is to hold down the Ctrl key when you actually do want a popup window to be created.
System Requirements
No installation is necessary. Simply create a directory and unzip all files from the Pop-Down.zip archive into it. To run Pop-Down, double click on Pop-Down.exe. All configuration information is stored in Pop-Down.ini, so to remove Pop-Down from your computer, just delete the Pop-Down directory.
Configuration
When Pop-Down is run, it puts a magic mushroom icon in the system tray. Double clicking on the icon will toggle the enabled state. Right clicking on it allows you to access all other configuration options.
The Windows Allowed sub-menu allows you to configure when Pop-Down starts killing browser windows from popping up. When set to zero, it will always kill new browser windows. When set to any other number it will wait until that many browser windows exist before it starts killing new ones. Under normal circumstances this number should be set to one.
By default Pop-Down beeps the PC Speaker each time a browser window is killed. The Notification sub-menu allows you to turn on and off this beeping.
Killing popup windows has an annoying side effect of generating lots of script errors. This happens when a script on the web page tries to access a popup window that no longer exists. The Internet Explorer sub-menu allows you to conveniently access a couple of Internet Explorer's advanced configuration options. Disable script debugging, when checked prevents the annoying script errors from appearing in Internet Explorer versions 5.0 and above. Play animations in web pages, when unchecked will prevent animated gifs from annoying you while you surf. This option is great for those rapidly flashing advertisements that are embedded in web pages. For the Internet Explorer options to take effect, Internet Explorer must be restarted.
Technical Information
Pop-Down works by setting a system-wide hook that traps every window's creation. If the window class matches that of Internet Explorer it checks to see if you are holding down the Ctrl key. If so, it will allow the window to be created normally; if not, it counts the number of existing Internet Explorer windows and determines if it should prevent the new window from being created by comparing this count to the Windows Allowed option.
Other Web Browsers
Pop-Down was written for Internet Explorer. I do not have plans to support other web browsers (such as Netscape or Opera). I did make an effort to support them, but each time I prevented one of their browser windows from being created they crashed.
Bug Reports
Send all bug reports to artcfox@rochester.rr.com. Please do not write me saying that Pop-Down did not prevent such-and-such a window from popping up if the Windows Allowed option is set to anything greater than one, because that behavior is intended.