Normally, activating your pop-up blocker, whether in your Web browser or antispyware program, is preferred. However, the downside to employing strict security measures is that sometimes legitimate Web sites and online activities can be blocked in the process.

If you’re viewing one Web page and want to jump to another by clicking a link, your pop-up blocker may prevent you from doing so. In theory, holding the CTRL key while clicking a link should override Internet Explorer’s pop-up blocker, but you may find it best just to change the setting.

To do so, click Tools in IE and select Pop-Up Blocker. Select Turn Off Pop-Up Blocker to shut off the tool entirely or select Pop-Up Blocker Settings to specify which sites you want to allow. In the Pop-Up Blocker Settings dialog box, you can enter the URLs of sites you wish to exempt from the pop-up blocker.

Try Again Later

Sometimes a Web site is inaccessible because its server is being overloaded with requests, or the server may be down temporarily due to a technical problem caused by the site’s administrator.

We encountered this type of problem recently with a popular site, ESPN.com, when we tried to open it on a Sunday afternoon during the football season. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who wanted to get the latest scores and stats from the NFL.

When we tried to open the URL (espn.go.com) from our bookmarked Favorites, we found a blank screen, although the status bar in IE indicated Done, as if we had successfully accessed the site. No “Server Busy,” “Host Unavailable,” “DNS [Domain Name System] Error,” or other error message appeared on the screen, but we knew the problem was on ESPN’s end, not ours, because we could access other sites. So we tried to open ESPN.com later in the day, and the site worked fine.

Accessibility problems sometimes happen with retail sites or other sites that process a lot of user information. Problems can also occur when the site administrator is in the process of updating the site.

Regardless of what is causing the problem, a server-based problem is almost always temporary, and the only thing you can do is try to open the site later.

Go Back To The Home Page

Links in emails and those that turn up on a search engine results page often take you to an obscure part of a Web site. For instance, you may get an email from a friend urging you to read a column, and the included link takes you to an archived portion of a Web site. This can lead to a problem if the specific file or article that you want to read has been moved elsewhere in the site, renamed, or even removed permanently from the site. When this is the case, you may see an “Error 404—File Not Found” or “Page Cannot Be Displayed” message.

One way to get around this problem is to try a shorter version of the URL. The shorter the URL you use, the closer you are to the main portion of the Web site, which is far more likely to be accessible than a file buried somewhere in the site.

Let’s say someone sends you the link to a story about caffeinated energy drinks from the CNN Web site. The URL looks like this:

www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/10/27/energy.drinks.ap/index.html

If you can’t access the article, go to the CNN home page and click the Health link. The URL now looks like this:

www.cnn.com/HEALTH

From this page, you can search for links that lead to the article, or you can use the site’s search engine to find it. Web site administrators may keep old articles accessible but change the URL once the article is no longer current or front-page news.

Update Your Browser Or Other Application


It’s prudent not to be the first to download the latest software updates. If you wait a while, the software maker often works out the kinks that inevitably exist in the updates.

But don’t drag your feet too long, or you’ll find that your version of the application is too old to be compatible with other programs. This is as true of Web browsers as any other software. Because Web content is constantly changing and Webmasters are using new technologies to create that content, you can’t afford to be denied access because of a dated browser or Internet portal software, such as America Online. If you’re more than one version behind in your browser—say, you’re using IE 5.5 while IE 7.0 is now available—it’s time to update.

Another good example of how outdated programs can block Web access is when you try to open a PDF (Portable Document Format) file online. To view a PDF file, you need to have the free Adobe Reader (www.adobe.com). The latest version is 7.0.8. You can use an earlier version of Adobe Reader; however, an older version may not open a PDF file that was created with the latest Adobe program. Just as your Web browser should be up-to-date, so should any other software you use to access information you find online.

Employ Work-Around For IE 7

To paraphrase Newton’s Third Law of Motion, for every software action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, updating your Web browser (the first action) may require you to fix the reaction that will occur.

Because IE 7.0 was recently released, some Web sites may not yet recognize this updated version of the Web browser. If you encounter this problem, Microsoft recommends that you download and use the User Agent String Utility, a small program that “tricks” the site into thinking the user is opening the site with IE 6. You can download this utility at the Microsoft IE 7 Support site (www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/support).

Call Your ISP

If none of the above steps resolves the problem, contact your ISP (Internet service provider). It’s possible that your ISP’s server is the source of the problem or has tweaked something that is affecting the ability of your Internet connection’s current Internet Protocol settings to work.

by Rachel Derowitsch