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What is Terminator
mode? |
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When switched into this mode, KillAd kills everything
promptly and regardless of any settings in the Advanced
options dialog (except for the Enabled browsers setting)
and contents of the Kill/Don't kill lists at that taking
extra care to keep your browser safe. By the way, everything
means "really everything including Windows Explorer
, Control Panel and other system views (which in fact
are different kinds of browser windows)".
Terminator mode can be extremely helpful in such a
common situation when closing a browser window opens
two or more new windows, each of which cannot be closed
without generating new windows etc. Without KillAd you
would end up flooded with tons of browser windows and
eventually with a system crash. In addition, this mode
can be useful when you are casually visiting an unknown
or user hostile site. In this case you don't have to
add anything into the Kill list and all site popups
will be killed anyway.
There are cases when you may want to keep a particular
new window alive even in the Terminator mode. Simply
press the Control key to disable KillAd temporarily
and the problem is solved.
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Can I start the
program in Terminator mode? |
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KillAd supports a few command line switches. You can
get the full list of them by running the program as "killad.exe
-?". One of the switches does exactly what you want:
it turns the Terminator mode automatically on and the
switch name is "-t". That is, start the program
as "killad.exe -t" and your problem is solved. |
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Does KillAd work
with Internet Explorer 6? |
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Yes, it does. Everything you have to do in order to
enable IE6 support is checking ALL MSIE x.x boxes (MSIE
3.x, MSIE 4.x and MSIE 5.x) in the Advanced Options dialog. |
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What is so special
about the program? I've seen similar programs. |
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I love and respect my users. All my competitors' programs
constantly monitor all windows in system, consuming lots
of precious CPU time and therefore slowing down the whole
system. KillAd does NOT degrade system performance because
it works in a completely different way. More, it does
not require any huge additional libraries like Visual
Basic run-time just because it is written entirely in
Assembly language. Yes, this requires much more efforts
than writing "programs" in Delphi or VB but
once again, I LOVE AND RESPECT MY USERS. I prefer to spend
my own time and efforts instead of making my users upgrade
their computers every single month and wasting their time
and money.
All this has a side effect. Have you ever heard the
phrase "This is not my bug, wait for the new Delphi
release, maybe they'll cure the bug"? Sounds familiar?
Yeah. You won't hear this phrase from me. All bugs in
KillAd (if any) are exclusively MINE, no other parties
involved.
And KillAd is free.
Anyway, you decide.
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What is considered
as a popup? |
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It depends. In general, I consider a popup ANY NEW BROWSER
WINDOW.
Yes, the rule may be a bit too severe, so there are
a few options telling the program what exactly it must
consider a popup.
First of all, you may instruct the program not to
spy for maximized windows. If your browser is maximized
and you open a new window manually, it gets maximized,
too (at least, Netscape works this way). That is, all
windows you open intentionally are maximized. On the
contrary, popups are rarely maximized. That is, most
of windows that open automatically are not maximized.
The task is done.
Second, you can give the program a list of popups.
As only the program sees a window whose title matches
to one of entries in the list, it realizes that this
is really a popup you don't like to see and destroys
it. If a window's title cannot be found in the list,
the window stays alive. This method is very accurate,
however you have to maintain the list of "wicked"
windows.
Third, you can instruct the program to take into account
sizes of new windows. It is possible to kill everything
that is smaller than the given dimensions and leave
the rest intact. Also, it is possible to set the dimensions
so that anything which is bigger will stay alive even
if it is in the Kill list.
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Your URL list
feature does not work. I know exactly that the line "Some
words from one of our sponsors" is in my URL list
but when I visit a site hosted on Geosh... oops... Geocities
popups stay alive. Why? |
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Computers (even ones running Windows) are a bit faster
than human brain. Usually browser windows change their
caption twice. At first the caption changes to the window's
URL and after a while it changes to the title of current
HTML document. When KillAd notices caption change most
probably the caption still shows the URL and in the case
of Geocities the URL is http://www.geocities.com/ad_container/blah-blah-blah.
When you notice the popup its caption usually has turned
into the document title and in the case of Geocities it
is "Some words blah-blah-blah". Though the latter
string presents in your URL list, KillAd does not destroy
the popup because it saw the first one and it was not
in the list. The solution is very simple - put both strings
in the list.
It is also possible for KillAd to miss the first caption
change and notice only the second one (quite often browsers
behave rather unpredictably). The solution is very simple
- put both strings in the list.
Summary: the solution is very simple - put both strings
in the list.
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How can I know
the first string? |
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Guess... ;-{) Don't worry, it's easy. The Add URL dialog
has all tools to do the job. When you open the dialog,
its edit control may be not empty. In this case it shows
the title string of the last tracked window as it was
seen from the point of view of KillAd. If this string
differs from the current title, add it and then use
Finder Tool to add the current title string.
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Something is wrong
with your Add URL dialog. Sometimes the edit field is
empty and sometimes it shows some strange URL. Huh? |
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This edit contains the title of the last tracked window
as it was seen from KillAd's point of view. If no windows
were tracked or if the last tracked window was successfully
recognized as a popup, the edit is empty. Otherwise it
isn't. |
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I want to add
an entry into the URL list but the Add button is disabled. |
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This entry (or an entry with wider scope) is already
in the list. For example, you want to add the "Some
words from" line and the entry "Some words"
is already in the list. In this case all windows whose
titles begin with the words "Some words" (including
ones whose titles begin with "Some words from")
are already popups and the line you're trying to add
is purely superfluous. The smaller the list is the faster
is its processing, therefore you better don't put superfluous
entries when you edit the list manually.
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When I open new
browser window it becomes background window first and
after a while returns into foreground. What's wrong? |
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If this behavior annoys you check the "Restore
focus: Never" box in Advanced options dialog. If
another method of focus controlling is chosen any window
while it is being suspected to be a popup is brought into
the background. When it is clear that the window is not
a popup it becomes active again. When you prohibit KillAd
to control the focus (Restore focus: Never) this effect
disappears but please note it also disappears for real
popups. |
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How do I change
the wave file? |
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Rename the wave file you want to use to killad.wav and
put it into KillAd folder. Starting with KillAd v0.07
you can put as many sound files (*.wav) as you want into
the KillAd folder and select the Play Sound/Random menu
item. |
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Your [...] program
plays my favorite wave file (Beethoven's 5th) not every
time it kills a popup. |
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The KillAd's sound subsystem is intentionally programmed
to not interrupt any currently playing wave sounds. Imagine
that you're listening to some MPEG file. KillAd destroys
a popup, stops your MPEG and plays its sound. There is
no way to restart your interrupted MPEG and you'll have
to restart it manually. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't love
this behavior. When popup intensity is high, the program
may attempt to play sound while the previous sound is
still playing. In this case one or more sound events may
be omitted. Note that this does not affect the situation
when KillAd is instructed to produce beeps and each killed
popup is accompanied by a beep. |
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The tray icon
does not change when I fiddle with the Control key. Why? |
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Most probably you are in a Windows 9x console application
or DOS session. Due to the Windows 9x design there are
no chances for Windows application to know that a key
was pressed in a console application. Or better say, I
am too lazy to build the bypass. |
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My browser crashes
sometimes after closing a popup. |
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Netscape, huh? Why do you ask me about the problem?
I don't do anything illegal. Netscape guys do. You can
easily prove that this is not my problem. Just open
a page producing popups and when a popup appears try
to close it as fast as possible. Try this few times.
If you're fast enough you'll win pretty soon. Another
way to prove this is to run the browser under NuMega's
Bounds Checker (please don't attempt to do this if you
suffer of heart diseases). After that you'll stop wondering
why it crashes sometimes (and start wondering why it
does not crash every single microsecond). Smart M$ guys
do not allow their browser to be run under BC, although
I'm sure the whole picture is the same.
As a temporary solution I can suggest to increase the
Pre-kill extra delay value in Advanced options dialog.
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Sometimes I receive
"Script error" message. Why? |
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Let me guess: Geocities and IE4. Yes? Yes. Unfortunately,
the script which produces popups on Geocities is pretty
wicked. Roughly speaking, it creates a popup, waits a
bit, and then attempts to communicate with the popup.
If the popup is closed for the moment, this attempt is
unsuccessful and IE4 reports error. You can easily reproduce
the situation by closing popups manually as fast as possible.
You can avoid the problem by increasing the Pre-kill
extra delay value to something like 2000-3000ms (the
biggest delay in the Geocities script is 1700ms but
implementation of this timing in IE is highly inaccurate).
This way when the script wakes up and attempts to communicate
with the popup, it is still alive and IE does not say
anything about the problem.
Btw, there is an option in IE5 which allows to disable
such "error" reports.
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I paid $9.95 for
your program but it does not work |
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KillAd always was, currently is, and will invariably
be free software so you could not buy it. What did you
buy then? Read the story.
A dishonest company sold you a product called Popup
Killer 3.0 or something of that kind. In fact, this
product is nothing more than a badly repacked copy of
KillAd, which lacks a few important files so it's not
surprising that it doesn't work well.
Needless to say that all this is COMPLETELY illegal.
I am NOT affiliated with that company in any way and
did not give them any permissions to cripple and sell
my software. And surely I did not get a single cent
from them. So if you have paid for this "product",
you are a victim of a fraud (and I am a victim of a
larceny).
Can I help you to make it all work? Well, imagine that
you buy a stolen car and then discover that its rear
view mirror is broken. Would you search for the original
owner of the car and demand him to replace the mirror?
Would he be happy? Our situation is almost the same
so in general I DO NOT SUPPORT such users. At least,
not until I get apologies from that company and a half
of their income. Considering their claim that they have
sold 500.000 copies for $9.95, I can agree on getting
only 1/5th and do without apologies. So where's my $1.000.000?
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