There’s this recurring vision that I have of a conversation with a client. In my vision the client and I are discussing the use of popup windows and advertisements on his website. I’m trying to explain that popups won’t work as he expects them to, that most people have popup blockers now, that more often than not they make people mad, and that because of all this the message that is so important gets lost in the noise, and that most visitors will entirely miss the message, which may very well have been an important message.

Then he says to me…

You know what would be great? I’d love it if you could program a big hand that would come out of the user’s computer screen, smack them in the face, and grab their wallet. Then the popup window would close automatically.

The whole point of the web is that people are