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While a surfing session can be a rewarding experience, as you gather information and make use of the various online services available from this virtual environment, it can also produce a real sense of frustration. Consider the scenario where you are entering details into a booking or order form for an online travel firm or record store when suddenly a window opens and partial blocks your view of the original page. This new window might contain information about a site you have no intention of ever visiting and have never shown any interest or maybe it is a request to complete a survey that will provide a marketing firm with an inexpensive source of data.

While it takes just a moment and a mouse click to remove this unwanted intrusion, it should not be necessary especially when there is a good chance that the removed window will be replaced by yet another uncalled for invitation to visit a site in which you have no interest. These popups might initially seem harmless but the annoyance can quickly build up and put off users from surfing the Web. I also feel that as you are footing the bill for your Internet connection then you should not be expected to endure these annoying intrusions.

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As with other computer afflictions, such as viruses and spam, software developers have taken the opportunity to produce a possible solution to alleviate the situation. In this case software has been produced to block the popups from appearing. Popup Killer is one such title. Developed by Manaccom and available in the UK from Phoenix Global Software, this title arrives in what is described as a soap box – purely on the appearance of its packaging.

Popup Killer has been designed to detect, block and normalise (I not quite sure what that is meant to mean) popup windows. As well as reducing the frustration that could build up from these intrusions, there should also be an increase in speed as your browser does not have to allocate resources to handle these messages.

As if to call attention to its own ability, Popup Killer allows you to set a sound effect to announce whenever a popup is blocked. This is not a feature that I particular like as it can also be regarded as a distraction in its own right but fortunately it is one that can be disabled.  Popup Killer creates a log of all the popups its blocks – some might consider this as another self-promoting feature but I feel it is useful in that it allows you to keep a check on blocked intrusions.

In some cases there are some sites you visit that you are willing to accept popups. This could be a shopping site that provides information on current special offers based on your buying history. These sites can be excluded from the blocking process by means of a White List. This list can easily be created by the user from within the program.

With a product such as Popup Killer you would want it to load automatically whenever you start your computer. However this setting is not turned on by default but can easily be rectified by clicking in the appropriate box in the main Popup Killer window.

Killer is simple to use and does help to reduce the amount of intrusive popups encountered during surfing sessions. Priced at £9.99, Popup Killer will run on any version of Windows and requires a 233MHz or faster processor with 32MB of RAM and 50MB of hard disk space.

http://www.phoenixglobalsoftware.co.uk/soap_box/popup_killer/index.asp