Synopsis:
Pop-up Stoppers: How to enable and/or disable in your web browser

Solution:
Pop-up windows are the unwanted advertisements that open on your screen as you are 'surfing' the Internet. As a general rule, pop-up windows are intrusive, although at times required for certain web applications. Often pop-up stoppers are the cause of web browsers malfunctioning or not behaving as you might expect. Newer browsers have built-in pop-up stoppers that you may not even know you have enabled.

• WebMail: Pop-up stoppers may be the cause of many issues with Princeton's IMAP WebMail; especially the 'Compose' or 'Reply' feature that is meant to open a new window. You will need to "accept pop-up windows" to use WebMail.
• Princeton's @princetonCourseware™: Pop-up stoppers have also been reported to interfere with Princeton's @princetonCourseware™ lectures from opening properly (if you see a message 'Transferring to @princeton courseware.... ' that hangs)

Use the steps below to configure your browser to allow certain windows to open:

• Internet Explorer
• Safari
• Netscape 7/Mozilla
• Google Toolbar

Hint: Be aware that many third party pop-up stoppers have "hot keys" that temporary disable the software so that windows can open. Try holding down the Control (Ctrl) key while clicking on the link to see if this works.

Internet Explorer
For Internet Explorer Update version SP2, you will need to "accept" pop-up windows to use WebMail as shown below. Note that Internet Explorer (prior to SP2) does not have a pop-up stopper feature; check to ensure that you have not downloaded a third party piece of software (such as the Google Toolbar) that is precluding you from opening certain web pages properly.

When you first click on the Compose icon in WebMail, you will beneath the Address toolbar the message "Pop-up blocked. To see this pop-up or additional options click here..."

Click on the message, and pull down to Always Allow Pop-ups from This Site...

Click Yes on the Allow pop-ups from this site? dialog box.

For more information on using Internet Explorer's Popup Manager, see Microsoft's KnowledgeBase article: Internet Explorer Popup Manager.

Netscape 7 / Mozilla
The browser will ask you if you want the pop-up blocker enabled after the first pop-up appears. It also opens the pop-up configuration screen at that time and presents a button Allowed Sites for sites allowed to display pop-ups. In this way, you need not disable pop-up blocking for a few select sites.
-or-

• Under the Edit pull down menu select Preferences
• Select Popup windows from the Privacy and Security category
• Make sure the Block unrequested popup windows box is checked, and then click the Allowed Sites... button
  

• Add the web address of your choice, for example webmail.princeton.edu
• Click the Add button
  

To turn off the built-in pop-up stopper in Mozilla or Netscape 7.x, uncheck the box Block unrequested popup windows or use the allowed sites feature to specify which domains can load pop-up windows.

Safari

• Use the Command-K keyboard command
• Check or uncheck the Block Popup Windows option

Google Toolbar
Google has created a free program called "Google Toolbar" which will help to stem the flood of pop-up ads. The toolbar will help to stop the pop-up windows from appearing in Internet Explorer's browser window. The program is free and available at http://toolbar.google.com. Look to Google's documentation for how to turn on and off pop-up windows.