Many situations lend themselves to using a popup window, where a smaller version of the browser window opens up on top of the main browser window.

However, recent web browsers go to great lengths to prevent popup windows from appearing, which is great for stopping intrusive popup advertising, but not much good when a website has a legitimate reason for displaying something in a popup window.

All major web browsers now require several clicks (and often a page reload) to allow a popup window for a particular website, so the easiest approach is to find an alternative method of presenting that information.

If you must use a popup, provide graphical instructions to your visitor on how to accept the popup window — ideally, detect the browser your visitor is using, and show instructions specific to that browser. (It’s not that hard to cover the main web browsers in use today: Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.)