Slashdot Mirror
IE To Block Pop-Ups
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...."
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?
And maybe in a couple more years we'll get mouse gestures too!
fp
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
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.
Soon pop-up ad companies will be hiring lawyers to attack Microsoft for blocking ads...
Who do we cheer for then? (grin)
Davak
IE To Block Pop-Ups; Slashdot to not post dupes; Hell to freeze over
Can I get my $5 back? I cant believe I paid for this shit
If Microsoft was patenting this technology, most /. users would call it evil, right? But, you claim Mozilla/Opera should patent it, and that would be good, right? Somehow I don't quite follow the logic here.
where will i download smiley emoticons and locate old school mates from?
~~
I never have a problem shopping online while blocking pop-ups.
Anyway, the companies that use shopping carts relying on pop-ups will just have to adapt or die. They need our money, right? Not the otehr way around.
Mozilla should sue Microsoft for theft of intellectual property.
Right. Sue them for the idea they took from Opera.
I suppose Mozilla should go sue Google too, right?
No, they can't do that, because you can't spell Google with a dollar sign like you can with "Micro$oft", and you just wouldn't get the same laughs from the Slashdot crowd.
evil adrian
Why would an intellectual property suit against Microsoft be OK? Just because Microsoft is loathesome doesn't make intellectual property suits right.
Stand up for what you believe in and don't make exceptions.
My favorite pop-up blocker is google's toolbar.,
If I'm going to have some stupid something sitting my windows toolbar section, it might as well do some useful stuff--search google, block pop-ups, and give me pagerank.
I love free software.
Davak
...is that they plan to have Clippy jump up and say 'It blocked a popup window for you. It looks like they were trying to sell you Viagra.' every time a popup is blocked.
That's funny since I just bought 4 books from Amazon, a rifle scope from swfa.com, and a sling and cheekpad from cactustactical.com using Mozilla and blocking pop-ups.
This guy is way out there
Anyone that's used Google Toolbar knows that shopping carts aren't broken by intelligent popup blocking, and I'm sure the same holds true for Mozilla and Opera. It's not hard to do.
(How is this informative? I swear to God I hope I get this guy in metamod...)
evil adrian
Now it they could only stop spyware and crap that integrated with aps in nasty ways you can't remove.
Bloody registry entries..
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
DUDE! Then the Mozilla foundation can claim the rights to IE (and since IE is integrated into Windows, they can claim the rights to Windows too!)
This is REALLY bad news for the rest of the world. This means that since most people will be able to block popups, the popup companies will resort to new methods of spawing, such as java windows, automaticaly executed ActiveX controls, and hijacking the browser window through their ads. While the middle wouldnt be a problem for anyone other than IE users, the other two could pose a serious threat to my abiltiy to use the web.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
Mozilla and Opera block automatic popups.
The shopping carts you describe prompted by the user clicking somewhere.
And in case you are afraid of false-positives, Mozilla alerts you whenever it blocks a popup (small icon at the left of the browser status bar) and you can unblock it.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
My memory is no doubt shorter than it should be (probably da weed) but I don't remember Microsoft EVER having a go at someone over a patent issue. As far as I know they use patents only defensively. I would be genuinely interested if anyone could come up with a counterexample. Anyone?
Maybe Mozilla.org/Opera should patent the technology to make it hard for Bill 'embrace and extend' Gates to kill those XCam ads....
I mean really, why is it necessary to make such an unproductive comment? The only thing that sort of comment accomplishes is making Open Source advocates look bad.
MS has had virtual desktop since NT 3.5 with the PowerToys add-on.
The campaign will use pop-under windows as the core of their advertising campaign. Utilizing a little-known bypass for their banner pop-up blocker mechanism in upcoming versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft will take 100% of the available pop-up banner impressions available for users. "This is a great day for Microsoft," said Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates. "Finally, our users will be able to view only those ads that our company sees fit to display to users."
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software -- any time, any place and on any device.
If you paid for windows, then it cost you the same way. If you run linux, then although you didn't pay, you also didn't get this app, so you can't claim that mac users pay while you didn't...
If I have *one* person tell me, upon downloading this, "Hey, did you know that they can block popups now??", I think I *WILL* kill them.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
Privoxy is an open-source web proxy that blocks ads of all kinds, and is highly customizable. It'll run on Linux, Windows, OS X, and god-knows-what-else, and will block all those annoying banners with a high degree of effectiveness. Better yet, it's been available since 2001; once again Microsoft is offering too little, too late.
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
it wouldn't be the first time microsoft stole a feature... i hear longhorn is gonna have virtual desktops...linux has had it for years... a lot of their interface is...shall we say...Mac Inspired (ex. the trash can)...
And the part that isn't Mac inspired is OS/2 inspired (right-click context menu, anyone?)
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
You can actually download a *powertoy* from Microsoft that will allow for up tp 4 virtual desktops in XP
alias dir='rm -rf
Some on-click popups are still controlled through javascript, which Mozilla (I dunno about Opera) will often still block.
That sometimes happen, true, but clicking on the link again will solve the problem in Mozilla.
I'd wager that most users don't even know what happens and just assume that they didn't click properly the first time. Heh.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
The kind of "pop up" that these tools block is a pretty specific thing. They don't block every JavaScript that opens a window. They allow "pop ups" that are triggered by user actions, and block "pop ups" that are triggered by system events. So if you click on a "more info" button that pops up a window to tell you about a product while shopping, for example, you'll see the info. But if you browse a pr0n site (who would do that?!) that triggers a script whenever the page is closed that opens a new pop-up, that'll be blocked.
This sounds simple, but the impact is immense. With a browser that blocks pop-ups (i.e. anything by IE), the intenet is a pleasant place. With IE, the internet is a horrible maze of X10 camera ads and pr0n spam.
If IE finally catches up to the other browsers, and implements a good pop-up blocker that is on by default, everyone will benefit.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Maybe Mozilla.org/Opera should patent the [popup blocking] technology
"Method for not opening a new browser window when asked to"?
Prior art: Every browser before Netscape 2 did this, very effectively!
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Great, knowing how well MS did with "The most Secure OS ever" (WinXP) I can rest assured that their solution to block ads will be better than Mozilla's ;)
Now where's my WinXP messenger spam script....hmmmm...
I think the point is that MS sees that pop-up killing is quickly become a killer app. I don't think that they are worried about third party apps like Proxomitron because only a small subset of users can/will install them anyway. You could argue that this is being done partly to prevent a drift towards alternate browsers, especially Mozilla, but again only a relatively small audience have the knowhow or desire to change from IE.
Personally I think this is more about reigning in the power of Google, specifically the Google Toolbar which can block popups. Joe User knows Google (they do not know Proxomitron) and the Toolbar is easy to install and it is very popular. I bet the Google Toolbar is installed all over Microsoft's campus.
Google used to be just a search engine, now it does much more, including supplying software to Microsoft's end users. Have any of you checked out the new Google Deskbar. Think about it: this is an application which bypasses the browser.
I think Microsoft is very afraid of Google and thats why they made an offer to buy them. They were turned down, so now watch what happens, on Longhorn there will already be a "MSN Search Deskbar" on bootup. This is an opening salvo in a Microsoft war on Google.
If you want popup blocking in IE you can do it already using the Avant browser. It uses the IE engine to render pages, but provides its own front-end with tabbed browsing and popup blocking.
I've been using it at work since they changed out work proxy so that Mozilla wouldn't work here anymore.
So now they just lack tabbed browsing, type ahead/fast search, better text zooming on fixed-size text, real PNG support and the rest of the "to-do list".
--
Will work for bandwidth.
"99% of off the shelf shopping cart systems now rely on this behaviour. This will surely alienate even more corporate customers, where the hell are Microsoft going?"
Nope. The solution is real simple: only call popups that are triggered by a mouseclick. Opera's done this for a while now, and I imagine Mozilla works similarly.
"Derp de derp."
I subscribe to MS technet, which contains a shitload of content, indexed on a CD. The interface used to navigate the index is nothing more than a front for IE (all of the index content is pretty standard HTML stuff). One thing I just noticed the other day is that if I open more than one item, it opens them a tabbed interface. Perhaps this is a special function of the interface, but like I said, it really isn't anything more than a framework for IE, so if they can do it there, why not in mainstream IE? Hell, for all I know, us technet subscribers are beta testing the tabs!
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
You know, where the phone companies sell their (home) customers services to block telemarketers, and then turn around and sell the telemarketers methods on how to get around those blocks?
Perhaps Microsoft will sell Pop-up advertisers a way to get around the new IE pop-up blocking software.
Hey, it's just another revenue stream!!
Perhaps Microsoft is doing this so ad companies will pay it to not have their pop ups blocked? Most users will not know (or care) how to turn off this pop up blocker. (I'm sure most of them don't want pop ups anyways.. I know I don't.) So an ad company would basically have to pay Microsoft to survive.
hey!
MYIE2 is a 3.3 MB download addon to Internet Explorer that adds pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, super drag and drop, customized searches from the address bar, aliases, and is highly customizable, so in a way, you already can get those things in IE.
I understand that it doesn't fix CSS or any of the security flaws, but it is a nice option for the hopelessly addicted IE user. Oh, and its free.
Well, when it comes to IE he's got a point. Development quality took a massive nosedive when it reached it's currentl level of the market. Look at their png support for example.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Surprised nobody at slashdot has made this connection so far.
Probably because Google's ad are not popups and won't be blocked.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Keep your eyes to the sky.
Won't this have somewhat of a reverse effect on the advertising industry? Since Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser, if it doesn't allow popup ads, that should motivate advertisers to look for different methods of annoying us, and the new ads would almost certainly be more intrusive than what we have now.
Look at history. First, there were simple banner ads that simply linked to a page. People didn't like the idea of being tracked, so they just copied the URL and put it in the address bar; bam, no referrer ID. Then, advertisers wised up and linked the ads to a CGI script, but the arguments were still plaintext, so people would just view the source of the page and get the URL from that. Now, advertisers once again have gotten around that by using IFRAMES for banner ads, so it's not nearly as easy to look at the source. Popup ads were immediately closed by the user, so advertisers developed popdown (or popunder, but popdown seems more antonymic) ads. Now, since popunder ads (and popup ads, as well) will be completely bypassed by anyone who uses Internet Explorer, advertisers will simply evolve as always and find the next way to pitch penis enlargement to us.
Later,
Patrick
I think this happens when the page hasn't finished loading and you click the link. Moz seems to just stop new windows being opened whilst the page is being loaded, but once it has completed loading, then new windows are A-Okay.
..which is maybe not the best implementation, but I still like Moz.
MS is using its monopoly power to put pop up advertisement companies out of business. Typical!
Internet Explorer can only display RGBA PNG images properly when using an ugly hack that violates CSS specifications and this method is very slow too (noticed when having a page with lots of RGBA PNG images).
If that hack is not applied, Internet Explorer will not show the transparancy, instead it will show either the background colour specified in the image or the browser's default background colour (usually gray), which is fully opaque.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
Don't panic. It won't work until version 3, so there will be plenty of time for businesses to work around it.
Because it will be really slow and clunky and not render any pages correctly.
They'll still be able to make Notepad Popups
Didn't that bell sound get annoying?
To all the skeptics, this is further proof that the courts made the right decision in allowing Microsoft to continue to innovate!!
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Keep in mind that Microsoft has had built-in internet searching via the Windows Shell through the Start Menu's "Search..." function for a few years now, so I don't think this is a huge surprise for anybody.
I also don't think it takes an incredible leap of imagination to think they might put an "Internet Search" control on the new Longhorn Sidebar. Claiming that by doing this they're trying to defeat Google's impending grasp on the desktop is a bit paranoid.
I mean, what else would they put on the new sidebar? A big clock? :-)
This isn't going to solve anything, it'll just force pop-up vendors to move to DHTML for their popups. If you've never seen one in action, the once at tek-tips.com comes to mind. It's a pretty reasonable "please sign up" type popup that occurs once per visit, until you register and let the cookie do it's thing. Mozilla doesn't block this, and it might be a long time before it ever does. I doubt that it's as easy to recognize these as advertising algorithmically as it is with JavaScript popups.
Anybody notice that this will only be offered with SP2 for XP?
Looks like a not very subtle shove toward XP on Microsoft's part. "Upgrade to XP, and get pop-up blocking!" Or keep your current OS and use Mozilla.
On a related note, I thought I heard that Office 2003 only runs on 2000 and XP. I see a trend here. Soon the only software Microsoft will offer will be Windows XP and Office.
If IE blocks popups like Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, and everyone else, then advertisers will just use much more invasive, hard-to-block ads. It will accelerate the arms race between marketroids and Internet users. Maybe ads will use Flash, Java, or some random security hole. As long as the unwashed masses are vulnerable to popup ads, they will be advertised to with popups and those of us who use good web browsers (read: not IE) won't see much invasive advertising.
It's an operating system, not a religion.
Prarie dogs: Be gone (not for people with sensitive stomachs.)
film footage of the use of high power high velocity rifles on "vermin"
Entertaining if you are into it. Quite sickening if you are not
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
With the delay in longhorn, why can't microsoft just wait to announce features till they are actually close? Say 3 months ahead of the release?
I'm so sick of hearing about new MS features for this or that only to find that they won't be available till 2006.
> You can actually download a *powertoy* from Microsoft...
:)
Try Virtual Dimension instead. It's GPL'ed and it's quite spiffy.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
What are pop-ups and why can't Mozilla show them? Am I missing something?? Will the next version of Mozilla finally be able to show these pop-ups??? Will Mozilla ever catch up with IE????
And in other news, IE will include tabbed browsing in a service pack to be released in 2007 with much fanfare of how it will revolutionize browsing the web!
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
Too few articles mention all three and articles mostly fall into one of two categories: Usually the articles praise Mozilla and Opera for features, usability, flexibility, support of standards, stability, security and multi-plaform support. Or they go on about the problems specific to MSIE, while implying that MSIE is the alpha and omega of web browsers, and finish by giving the bad advice to sit still and obediently wait to buy the next upgrade, service pack, bug fix for MSIE. At the same time, users and administrators tied to MSIE are prevented from learning unresolved problems. There are also further costs if company data, such as customer lists, are compromised as a result.
Clearly censorship is not the optimal long term nor even short term solution. IT staff can save time and money now by migrating their users to Mozilla and Opera.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"It will accelerate the arms race between marketroids and Internet users"
This is certainly true. That being said, in the mass market right now the "marketroids" are the only ones fighting the war right now -- IE users are all on the receiving end of so much advertising that the general internet is all but useless. Sure, the advertisers will find new ways to abuse internet users, but that was going to happen anyway.
One side effect, though, will be that those of us using web browsers that have blocked pop-ups forever may be vulnerable to the next bit of advertising. But I'm confident that our browsers can move faster than IE...
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
> Just having toggles to enable/disable javascript and java near the address bar would be excellent. Same with disabling plugins like flash. Just so you don't have to go through menus and preference boxes to do it every time...
Mozilla + PrefBar = just that.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
OT (On topic): I don't think they have to know how the thing they are trying to use works. I'd rather
say the thing they are trying to use must how the user works or would like to work.
OT (Off topic): You provably don't know how to grow the very crops that you eat everyday, you don't know how to build a working version of a car, you don't know how the account deparments process your salary so that they are fine with the law requirements. Even if you know some of these, you provably don't, and can't know, even a mere 1% of how things work, but other people know.
Your point is very centric assuming everyone has to know the one field you think it's the base and final goal of human life. If you relax the asumption, you'd know your just being pedantic.
"Don't care to learn? that would make you an idiot."
Look at how many things you don't know, and I am pretty sure you'll have a slight perspective on how idiotic everyone is.
(note: I don't care if you care. I just want to clarify your point, that is a very common)
unfinished: (adj.)