PopUpCop's Irritation Levels allow you to select, modify and define new irritation levels.
An Irritation level is a collection of settings for each annoyance that PopUpCop suppresses. An annoyance (or irritation) is a browser behavior caused
by a web site that is not intended or desired by the user.
Click here for more information about each of the annoyances that PopUpCop can block.
There are three predefined levels designed to meet most of your web surfing needs.
Very annoying sites (most annoyances suppressed)
This setting is intended for use when you are browsing in a known "bad neighborhood" on the Web. These settings will "break" many Web sites.
Annoying sites (some annoyances suppressed)
This setting is intended for use if, in addition to not liking popups, you also don't like animations. These settings might "break" a few Web sites that require one or more of the technologies to operate.
Sites with popups (only popups suppressed)
This setting is intended for use if you don't like popups, but animated advertisements do not bother you. Very occasionally, PopUpCop might block a popup that you wished to see by mistake.
Each Irritation Level can be customized and new levels can be created and added to the PopUpCop Irritation Slider. To modify or create Irritation Levels, select Customize PopUpCop... from the PopUpCop main menu.
The Level slider control selects the Irritation Level that you wish to select or modify. As you move the slider the name and annoyance settings are updated. This allows you to customize each annoyance setting.
Each annoyance can be set in one of three ways:
Allowed (annoyance is not suppressed)
Blocked (annoyance is suppressed)
Unchanged (annoyance is not changed from the previous level)
The Allowed and Blocked settings turn off or on the selected annoyance suppression.
The Unchanged setting is used when you want an annoyance setting to be retained from the last level you were browsing with. For example, by default the Accept or Block Cookies annoyance setting is set to will not be changed. This means that changing the Irritation level will not affect the annoyance setting for cookies. When you manually set Accept or Block Cookies from the PopUpCop Action Menu, your manual setting for Allow Cookies will be retained when changing Irritation Levels. PopUpCop sets the default for this particular annoyance this way because cookies often make browsing the web more efficient.
The Popups annoyance setting has one additional setting called Ask about each popup. This can be used to selectively view popups as you encounter them.
Modify an Irritation Level's settings
To modify one of the predefined Irritation Levels, you select the level you want to modify and then click on the annoyance button to change it current setting. For example, to allow Script Mouse Tricks in the Very Annoying Irritation Level do the following. From the Irritation levels tab of the PopUpCop Options dialog:
Use the Level slider to select Very Annoying sites (suppress most)
Click once on the button labeled Script mouse Tricks will be turned off, which will change the text to read Script mouse tricks will be turned on.
Click the OK button to finish.
Name
Optionally, you can modify the name of the Irritation Level to indicate the changes you have made. Edit the text as needed and PopUpCop will remember it and display it when you hover the mouse cursor over the Irritation Slider control.
Restore factory defaults
Dont worry about messing up the predefined settings for each level, since you can use the Restore factory defaults button to undo any changes made to the factory Irritation Levels.
Set all off, Set all on, Set all to no change Quick set buttons
These three buttons are a handy way of changing all the annoyance suppressions to the same setting. From there then you can modify just the few annoyances that you want to change.
Annoyance Suppression Buttons
Each Annoyance Suppression feature has an associated button. Clicking on the button will change the setting for that annoyance suppression.
To create a new, personalized level, follow these steps:
Select the existing Irritation Level you would like to base the new level on using the Irritation Level Slider.
Click the New level button. This create a new level and sets the Name to New level based on whichever level was selected when you pressed the New level button.
Edit the Name to reflect the type of sites you are customizing for.
Click OK to save the new level. Notice that a new tick appears on the PopUpCop Irritation Level slider on the PopUpCop toolbar. When you move the slider a tooltip message displays the name for each level.
Delete Level
The Delete level button removed the currently selected Irritation level. You can remove all but one of the Irritation Levels.
Order Levels
Once you have custom Irritation Levels defined, you may want to control where they appear on the Irritation Level Slider. Click the Order levels button to display the Order Levels dialog.
The Order Levels dialog display a list of all Irritation Levels defined. The first item in the list corresponds to the left most setting on the Irritation Level slider on the toolbar (and on the Irritation levels Options dialog). To change the order, click on the level you want to move and then click the Move up or Move down buttons. Once you have the order the way you like then click OK.
When you are finished editing Irritation Levels, you can click OK to save your changes and put away the PopUpCop Options dialog. If you want to continue changing options then click on any of the tabs at the top of the dialog.
