Pop-up Blockers and Hebrew College Online Tools
In order to run through the setup wizard that tests and configures your computer for Live Classroom, you must allow it to "pop open" new windows. Many computers run "pop-up blocker" programs in order to prevent Web sites from opening up all those annoying windows with unsolicited advertisements. In fact, if you have a Windows XP system you almost certainly have a pop-up blocker running, since by default the XP operating system comes with one that it turns on to protect you. Your Internet service provider (usually a company such as Verizon) will probably also have installed a pop-up blocker for you when you first configured your computer to use their service. Yahoo and Google also install pop-up blockers if you accept their "toolbars" for your browser. Thus many users have more than one pop-up blocker running; any one of them can veto a browser's ability to pop open a new window, so we have to deal with all of them.
Usually, if your browser blocks a popup, it will display a small message at the top of your browser display window alerting you that it has blocked a popup. You can click this message for specific options, such as enabling that specific URL to open new windows while still preventing any other Web site from doing so. If your browser does this, you simply need to look for this message and enable any HCO Web site you try to use with your browser, when you are first prompted to do so. If you cannot find this message, you may need to take a few additional steps.
What this means is that you have to (1) figure out which (if any) pop-up blockers are running on your system, and (2) either turn them all off or force all of them to "trust" hebrewcollege.edu, the Hebrew College Blackboard site, and, for class discussions, the Wimba Live Classroom Web site (and thus allow us to open new pop-up windows).
We've provided two sets of instructions: one on disabling pop-up blockers and one on enabling specific pop-up blockers.
The Disabling Pop-up Blockers section includes material provided by Wimba that should help you with both (1) and (2). Note that it only explains how to totally disable pop-up blockers—not how to leave them enabled but force them to allow specific sites (ours!) to pop open windows, which would be a better strategy. Some pop-up blockers actually offer you the option of "allowing new windows" from the site that they have just blocked, which makes it easy to get the pop-up blocker to trust our Live Classroom site: just go there, have the pop-up blocker "block" us, and then accept the offer to always allow new windows from our site! The second section, "Enabling Specific Pop-ups," will allow you to set the three sites to allow pop-ups but still keep blocking pop-ups from other sites.
If you choose to disable all pop-up blockers when using the three sites, remember to re-enable the pop-up blockers when done accessing the sites.
The instructions at these links should help you get over this initial hurdle.
Are you nervous about all this? Don't be—the good news is that actually using Live Classroom seems to be a lot easier than setting up for it! We will get through this setup issue and find it (relatively) clear sailing afterwards.
