when you visit you get a popup window, what is this called + any idea how to do it?

Thank you for your reply, what is the simplest way to do have a modal loading animation only i.e. when page loads that animations shows and when done the animation goes? ASP.NET/Ajax

when you visit http://www.daniweb.com you get a popup window, what is this called + any idea how to do it?

Thank you for your reply, what is the simplest way to do have a modal loading animation only i.e. when page loads that animations shows and when done the animation goes? ASP.NET/Ajax

• javascript
• html

• 32 It's called a pain in the arse, and there's often a better solution. – Skilldrick Commented Feb 18, 2010 at 20:43
• 1 It pisses me off when these things pop-up all on their own. But they are useful as an alternative to javascript alerts, and stuff like that... IE: when the visitor requests it... not when the server arbitrarily decides to initiate it. – Chase Florell Commented Feb 18, 2010 at 20:51
• 7 And don't you just hate those ads that you mouse over and they expand over the page content? – Mark Schultheiss Commented Feb 18, 2010 at 20:52
• @Mark, what is even worse is usually there isn't an X or something to make it go away, you just have to wiggle your mouse around til some timeout expires – Earlz Commented Feb 18, 2010 at 21:13

7 Answers 7

You'd call this a modal dialog, and you can implement one very easy with jquery ui:

http://jqueryui.com/demos/dialog/#modal

I like to refer to these windows as ANNOYING The other name is some form of JS or JQuery.

Its called a javascript popup window.

Here's a link to show you how to open a js window

The way it looks though is they are using the modal popup extender provided by the ASP.net AJAX Control library. This can be simulated via JQuery as well.

It's called a modal dialog window. "Modal" meaning "mode" as in the UI has two modes, one where you can only interact with the dialog window, the other where there is no dialog window and you can interact with the rest of the page.

Probably looks something like a lightbox/thickbox .Showing some text/html instead of images

This is a modal pop up window, meaning you can't do anything else while that window is open.

Here are a bunch of ways to make them.

You can set up this kind of popup by having Javascript on the onload event create an overlay div that has height 100% and a higher z-index than the content, and also a div for the popup with position fixed and an even higher z-index. Then when the user clicks on close or otherwise it is time for the popup to go away, the Javascript can set display: none on these divs.

You can use Firebug (or IE Developer toolbar) to see the styles used on the example page you mentioned and use that as a model.

(Also they are annoying, but at least better than pop-unders, IMO ;-) )

Thats a modal dialog popup. Here's a nice jQuery version that I have used before.