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IE To Block Pop-Ups

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the late-to-the-party dept.

smd4985 writes "Next year MS will release a XP service pack that enables IE to block pop-up ads. Only a few years late. Maybe Mozilla.org/Opera should patent the technology to make it hard for Bill 'embrace and extend' Gates to kill those XCam ads...."

3 of 719 comments (clear)

  1. Proxomitron? by Empiric · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's the point? Among others, Proxomitron is free, takes 5 minutes to set up, and is massively configurable for popup/banner/script/etc. blocking.

    The strange thing here for me is why Microsoft would do this from a business perspective. I would think they're drawing a fair amount of income from their MSN portal advertising. Maybe it doesn't work for MSN? Or they're only blocking popups because the don't plan on having them on a MSN linked site anyway?

    --
    ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
  2. Bad for users of alternative browsers? by Spleener12 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The thing is, before now companies who did the pop-up thing didn't bother figuring out how to get around existing pop-up blockers because the browsers that had them are not remotely in the majority, and I'll bet that there isn't a terribly significant percentage using separate pop-up blockers, either- kinda like how Mac/Linux users are mostly safe from viruses because most viruses are designed for Windows because most people use Windows. If pop-up blocking is integrated into the browser that 90% of the web-surfing population is using, you can bet that they'll start figuring out how to get around it- or worse, figure out some more annoying method of advertising. Either way, us Mozilla(Firebird)/Opera users might get screwed along with the IE users.

    Or they'll just exploit one of IE's 40 billion security holes to get the pop-ups through and everyone else will be just fine.

  3. Prediction by Davak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Soon pop-up ad companies will be hiring lawyers to attack Microsoft for blocking ads...

    Who do we cheer for then? (grin)

    Davak