nasty surprise at AltaVista

[lalexander at acad.com]

On Sat, 13 Jun 1998, Shirl Kennedy wrote:

>> 
>> When the results came back, I was horrified to be confronted by a pop-up ad

On Sun., June 21, Mr. Hobbs wrote:

> I must have skipped the "pop-up" part. I've not noticed pop-up ads for   
> anything as I search AltaVista. Of course, turning off Javascript would 
> disable the pop-up ads (as well as any other Javascript features, 
> unfortunately)

After playing around with Shirl's example, I have found that (so far), the 
pop-up ads are only enabled when you select Advanced Search. Perhaps they feel 
that the value-added of doing an Advanced Search is worth the annoyance of an 
unsolicited pop-up ad? This is a disconcerting trend, however. BTW, I can make a
second window open without Javascript by using frames and targets, lest we 
thought those who turn off Javascript are completely safe from these intrusions.

Larry Alexander
AP, San Diego