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attention site builders: if your site copy has any words that are similar to "disable your pop-up blockers" please change now.  i've been seeing this a lot lately and it really bothers me.  i haven't seen it on any microsoft site yet, but if someone has, please let me know so i can pester the site owners as well (you know, trustworthy computing and all).  here's an example of one from samsung:

If you selected the "Software" link from the SGH-i607 (BlackJack) page and reached article regarding the Update for your BlackJack but were not taken to the End User License Agreement (EULA) page for acceptance and download of the file, it is because there is a PopUp Blocker is enabled on your system.  Please temporarily disable any PopUp Blockers that you have in order to download this file.  The PopUp Blocker can be enabled again after the download is complete. (via samsung.com)

generally these are pretty easy to get around without disabling them (i.e., hold ctrl key down while clicking) but samsung has succeeded in ensuring that i must disable my security features for a moment. 

seriously, this is horrible and DEFINITELY does not pass the test.  you can tell i'm serious because i took the time to capitalize definitely in the previous sentence.  if you are building a site that requires another page to 'pop up' then ensure you aren't asking your users to disable some form of security like blockers, virus, etc.  that is just plain bad internet citizenship.

(oh, and for the record, yes i did disable it, which the link launched a pop-up window which launched another pop-up window, which inevitably launched another pop-up window -- i'm currently looking at 4 samsung pop-up windows on a single click -- so there is more than just bad citizenship design going on here, but removing the pop-up would be a start...jeez)

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