I am, like most of us here no, not a 'typical' end user. But I have to
admit that I get confused quickly when a site pops up additional
screens. The *only* popup I found sofar that I kind-of like is the 'I
am processing your request, please hold' like shellgeostar does.
There are other things that annoy me even more: pop up a box with 'it
worked!', and just an okay button. Or even more aggravating: 'it
didn't work, press reload to try again', and then, again, just an okay
button - the user has to find the reload button himself...
Another problem with pop-ups is slow connections. A lot of times the
main-screen has been fully loaded, images and all, before a single
line in the popup shows. To make matters worse, the 'designer' has
'helped' to remove 'confusion' for the user by, erhm, changing
*everything* s/he is familiar with on a browser window:
- Navigation bar (back, fwd, home): gone
- Location bar (http://....): gone
- Status bar: GONE!
- Menubar: gone
Remember, there are people out there who don't even know how to close
a window with the 'X' in the top-right corner.
I like to have everything inline. Infact, most (not all) sites have a
fallback when javascript doesn't work. If I want something from a site
with popups, I disable javascript.
Only a 'modal' dialog for login (like basic-authentication does),
would be fine for me. But remember: most sites use forms, people are
used to them.
