Not only is the analogy correct, the problem has the same solution: require evidence of user intent. Pop ups work just fine when spawned as a result of a user clicking on a link. Videos can start playing when a user taps or clicks on them.

> Not only is the analogy correct, the problem has the same solution: require evidence of user intent.

You make a very good point, but I'm not totally sure that it is the complete answer. I agree that it is clearly right for my browser to display pop-ups, and play videos, when I indicate my intent that it do so. My question was not whether that should happen, but whether any users want pop-ups as the method of interaction (or information display). Although I definitely want, in an operational sense, PeopleSoft to show me a pop-up when I click on the relevant button, because that's the only way to get to certain information, what I really want, in an aspirational sense, is for it to display the information in some other way, without a pop-up at all.

The ability to launch popups (on user click) is vital for our "Direct Results"[1] option at searchtempest.com, although admittedly that's quite an edge case.

http://support.searchtempest.com/hc/en-us/articles/205166847...

I like it when I open a youtube page and it automatically plays.

Easily handled with a prompt:

  "This site is attempting to auto-play media"
  [Allow once] [Always allow site] [Block site]

Right now, I don't think people generally want popups, but they became popular well before AJAX.

Pop-ups that open new tabs are still useful on sites where you're unlikely to want to navigate away and are prone to the same abuses.

That is pop-up on click, a user action. I don't think people despise that as much as pop-up at any random time while you are reading stuff.

A good use case is linking to a FAQ item in a form. You don't want to navigate away, but the item is usually small, so a pop-up in a small window is good.

A frame that displays the item you clicked on on the right, with the faq links on the left, would be great for this use case. The only thing I think was wrong with frames was that the main url didn't point to the frame you had open, like url#framename.

Why not have some sort of CSS / JavaScript trickery so that the FAQ item can be displayed or hidden without any sort of pop-up at all? Anyone who browses with JavaScript off is tech-savvy enough to open up the page in a new tab. (Anyway, for me, this definitely falls under the "web site thinks it's the best UI; I don't", but I recognise that this is almost by definition a matter of personal opinion.)

This was the use case for frames.

And that still works today.

The types of popups that are blocked are the ones that open automatically.

Is there a good use case for automatic popups?

Well, media players and help sections are decent use cases for popups. Opening external links in a new tab is also great. I've even played some browser-based games that used popups to minimize chrome, enable alt-tabbing and force a cookie reset.

Pop ups are awesome when they have content I want. They're a quick way to draw attention to something important while retaining the page they are on. These aspects of usefulness unfortunately apply to ad-infested pop ups.