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Introduction
Last updated: Sep 9, 2005
Are you tired of those annoying pop-up ads that get displayed when you
visit some Web-sites? There are a lot of programs,
which block the pop-up ads. One of the first such programs -
PopUp Killer, was developed by Xavier Flix
in 1995. Since then "popup killer" became a generic name for this kind of
software. I'll use the term "popup killer" not as a title of the
specific program, but as a generic name for all popup blocker software.
In many cases there is no formal difference between a pop-up
ad and a useful new window. This is the main reason why there were no objective tests to estimate
the popup killers' quality till now. I have created
such objective tests, which help us evaluate popup killers' ability
to block pop-up ads and accept usual new windows. I'll
use PKIQ (popup killer Intelligence Quotient) to estimate the popup-stopping
software. PKIQ consists of two numbers. The first one is the "accept useful new
windows" success rate and the other is the "stop pop-up ads" success
rate. More details...
The main purpose of this review is to help people find the eligible program to stop pop-up ads.
Please feel free to send me proposals
and links to programs which are missing in the review at author@popup-killer-review.com.
138 popup killers found on the Web have been analyzed. From the bird's eye view the tested programs may be divided in 4 groups:
- Intelligent Pop-up Blockers, which distinguish pop-up ads from useful new
windows and automatically stop the pop-up ads only. In this case both components of PKIQ are greater than 0%.
If the PKIQ is equal to (100%,100%), then this popup killer is really clever.
- Trainable Pop-up Blockers, at first you should teach such program to close
certain windows needed and after that it will stop them successfully. In this case PKIQ
is equal to (100%,0%), as such popup killers don't stop unknown popup windows.
- Serial Pop-up Killers, which stop all pop-ups (both pop-up ads and useful
new windows). In this case PKIQ is equal to (0%,100%).
- Browsers with popup killer embedded - full-featured browsers with popup killer capabilities.
The list of the tested programs is here. If you know other programs, please inform me
at author@popup-killer-review.com.
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