Curious about a certain kind of popup alert

I just had an idea for an internal promotional tool, but I'm not sure if it already exists in some way, or if someone can write the script or knows someone who can.

Was just thinking that something like in the old Pop Up Videos might be kinda cool -- at a random time on certain pages, a little DHTML or Flash-type of alert could appear, then vanish after a short length of time. It wouldn't need to be huge and obnoxious, just a small blurb that pops up, delivers info, and goes away, all from an inconspicuous (yet visible) edge of the page. It could be used to advertise current news or specials, or mention upcoming additions or updates to the site.....lots of other things.....

I have not heard of a popup script that would do this, but I do know that you can do something like this with mouseovers, where you can pop up a descriptive text box when someone mouses over a certain field. But of course this would be static messages, not ones that change as time goes.

Its a pretty kewl idea, I am not sure how to do it though


cheers,
Luke

You would need to use flash and create some form of rollover ad.

It would also need to have some kind of cookie validation to ensure it only popped at certain time set within the cookie itself.

You would probably be best speaking to a flash designer and asking them how easy / difficult it would be to do although personally, i think the most expensive part would be the flash message itself :)

Regards,

Lee

Yeah, I'm thinking it'd mainly be Flash too....cookied, yeah....

hmmmmmm......more control over when, where, and how often it appears though.....thinking out loud here. I've seen popups like this before at different sites, one of the bear sites uses it too for their ads now and then (I could find it, it'll just take a while). It acts just like a popup, only it's part of the page.....and doesn't go away that I've seen (although maybe on a webmaster/computer site it could have, like CNet or something). I'll have to keep this in mind for later....

Why not just an iframe? stick a page with a meta refresh or a small flash applet inside an invisible iframe of the size and the location you choose. This is probably not what you are looking for, but it would allow you to keep that area of the page blank for the amount of time you set, then have something appear there later. This is especially handy if you want a clean page to begin with, with the ads/messages only comming on for people who don't emediately click off of the page.