What popup killer should you choose? and why?

To find out more about the popnot popup killer I decided to ask the people behind it to give me some reasons to choose popnot compared to others on the market. The original answer are (by permission) here in unedited form.

The answer from Hdsoft will also give you some Insider information about how popup killers work. 

Question:

Hi! I just downloaded PopNot from your websites. I have been trying different popup killers lately, if we forget the price tag (very favorable for PopNot). Can you give me some good reasons why I should register PopNot compared to other popup killers on the market
like: popup stopper pro/companion, popup eliminator, Historykill, popupcop, adsgone, exit killer.?

Best regards
Rune Langhelle
Norway

Answer

Hello Rune,
The best way to select a pop-up killer is definitely to try them all and see which one you like after testing each thoroughly (to check performance on a wide variety of websites).
 This aside, however, there are two main reasons our software is better than competing software (both shareware and freeware): features and technology.  I should warn you that what follows is a rather lengthy elaboration. PopNot has some extremely useful features, although some are less well known than others. Specifically:

1. It automatically can prevent unsolicited browser pop-up windows from ever appearing, while allowing browser windows you do want to open (by clinking on a link or a button, for example). This requires no setup.

 2. For pages with desirable unsolicited pop-up windows, "Allow site's pop-up windows" rules may be added, either in the rules editor or by just right-click on the page and selecting this from the context menu.

 3. For applications (like Morpheus) that create pop-up ads when they run, PopNot can be set to kill these pop-up windows too (in Morpheus's case, browser windows are created, and the user may add an "always kill this pop-up window" rule for the pop-up.)

 4. For applications that create non-browser pop-up windows, PopNot includes a "general window killer" that can kill almost any window by its caption and/or the program that generated it (so, for example, you could choose to kill all windows with the caption "Pop-up window" from the application "C:\popupgen.exe".)

5. Hotkeys make it easy to temporarily disable PopNot, to "normalize" a browser window, to kill a window (browser or otherwise) with a single click, and to kill and always kill a window with a single click (PopNot will both close the window and add a rule to kill it in the future).

 6. PopNot maintains a log of all killed pop-up windows.

 7. PopNot can show the user an optional visual or audio alert when a pop-up window is blocked or killed (and includes a library of amusing sounds).

 8. PopNot can be set to redirect navigation to new windows into the current window (if you don't want additional IE windows opening).

 9. PopNot can force browser windows to have certain characteristics, such as displaying a status bar, being resizable, or not showing automatic download prompts (using "silent mode").

 Many of these features (especially forcing browser window characteristics and the ability to kill more than just browser-generated pop-up windows) cannot be found in other pop-up window killers. PopNot does not have options to do things like no display images or disable scripting (like some other pop-up killers do), but these kind of things can easily be done in Internet> Explorer's options, and we thought this would be both confusing and redundant.

What really sets PopNot apart, though, is the technology, the algorithms it uses to allow good pop-up windows and block bad pop-up windows. All other pop-up killers use one of these methods for killing pop-up

windows:
1. Examining a window's caption or size for certain keywords to identify pop-up windows, and then killing them.

2. Examining the actual HTML code and trying to delete the code that creates a pop-up window (this normally only serves to corrupt a page, since many pages now break up the Javascript creating a pop-up ad in order to prevent the program from recognizing it).

3. Checking if the target of a browser window matches the HREF in the link being clicked (this normally works okay for standard links, but will always kill new browser windows created by Javascript).

 4. When the user clicks the mouse or presses enter or space, the program records the time. If a new window tries to open within a very short interval afterwards, the program will allow it to open. This is the method most of the "intelligent" pop-up killers on the market use.

 The problems with #1, #2, #3 are obvious. The major problem with #4 is that it tends to be inaccurate in deciding what is and what isn't a pop-up window (try the test page, pop-up blocker tester, with such a pop-up killer -- it will fail). While some work better than others, all can be tricked by clever page designers (for instance, a page can simply simulate a click event to trick the pop-up killer into allow a pop-up window to be opened). They also tend to be inefficient, because the program has to process each click event (and the better ones will process the page to figure out what kind of object was clicked, which takes more time). PopNot is much more sophisticated. It examines the page and tries to deduce what is going on, but does so efficiently. It allows a pop-up window if and only if it can deduce that the user requested it.
Because PopNot is deterministic (not timer/click-based), it won't mistakenly allow a pop-up ad. Although I cannot divulge exactly how PopNot performs its deduction, it is done in such a way that the minimum amount of processing necessary is done (and is thus generally more efficient than other pop-up window killers).

 Also important is the rigorous testing that PopNot has undergone and the effort we've expended making sure it won't destabilize or crash the browser.
Many other pop-up killers (especially "intelligent" pop-up killers) cause crashes because they try to reference pages or browser properties (via Internet Explorer automation and MSHTML.dll, which makes accessible the DHTML object model to other programs) in inappropriate or dangerous ways (for instance, trying to set most browser properties before the browser window has finished loading can cause MSHTML.dll errors). This isn't the programs own fault, per se, because Microsoft should have done a better job making its components safer for automation, but it does remain a lurking problem for the user (there's nothing worse than a browser crash when you're filling out a long form).

Similarly, PopNot doesn't interfere with other applications, such as email clients like Outlook, as some other pop-up killers do (in the case of Outlook, they can prevent new browser windows from opening when you click on a link within an email).

Lastly, PopNot isn't a browser add-in/toolbar (instead it resides in the system tray as a light bulb icon). Some people see this as a disadvantage in that the software doesn't have a persistent interface within the browser window.

However, this approach has 4 major problems:

1.  If a new window opens where toolbars are not displayed, the user cannot adjust the pop-up killers settings (unless of course another window is open or the user enables toolbars, which can sometimes not be possible if script hides them).

 2. Toolbars take up space in the browser window, oftentimes reducing the amount of a page that can be seen.

3. Most importantly, browser add-ins are loaded into each individual browser window's address space, which not only consumes much more memory and slows loading, but also tends to make the browser more unstable.

We recommend that PopNot be kept running all the time (in order to kill windows as necessary and respond to hotkeys), but it can also be set to load and unload with the browser. This is still much more efficient than browser add-ins, of course, because PopNot still does not have to load with each browser window, but instead only once for the first browser window.

If you have any further questions, please let me know. Thank you for your interest,

 Jeff Pasternack
 Technical Support

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