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Firefox Improves Pop-Up Ad Blocking
BlakeCaldwell writes "The popular open-source browser already contains a pop-up blocker by default, but this does not handle pop-ups launched by plug-ins such as Flash and Java. Mozilla employee Asa Dotzler wrote in his blog last week that Mozilla developers are responding to the increasing number of advertisers that are using plug-ins to launch pop-up ads."
...and it seems to work very well so far. The sites I've noted that managed to get a popup through even with the normal popup blocker can no longer get them open.
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
How soon til the pop-up ad companies find a way around this new blocked and Mozilla has to respond again, ...
In short, it doesn't work particulary well. However, adot has responded and says that those issues will be worked on.
Having suffered one of those "new generation" of pop ups only about 10 minutes ago, I look forward to seeing this functionality when it's in a more finished state.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
This is why I like to use FF. The rate of change from the devs is so much faster than most other browsers. (Opera may be better, I don't know, I never use it, I don't like the ads) Pop-ups are starting to bother FF users, so the Mozilla guys start to sort it out. Well done guys, and thanks.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/experimental/popupsdie/
This isn't really an update to the popup blocking code in Firefox, it makes the default preferences a little more aggressive.
In fact, it blocks all popups so that you have to manually whitelist the sites that use legitimate popups.
Fight plugins with plugins.i nfo.php?application=firefox&version=1.0&os=Windows &category=Web%20Annoyances&numpg=10&id=433
For the 3 people who aren't aware of the Flashblocker extension yet.
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/more
Might not be the ideal solution who use alot of web applications rather than just surfing.
Here's a test popup/popunder link for Firefox using flash.
This is one of the reasons I chose Firefox, its stable, has tabbed browsing and keeps evolving..
The POP Up blocker is already pretty good, so much so that is scares the pants off me just how much crap I miss out on evertime i go to an old Windows box with IE 5 or 6 Vanilla installed.
Kudos to the Firefox developers and the community, developing a cross platform browser that was born to rock
-- Jim
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
Ah, just yesterday I was getting annoyed because I had seen three or four pop-under ads in less than a week.
Then I borrowed a friends machine with Internet Explorer. Wow! I had no idea how much crap Firefox was blocking!
How do people live with all of this garbage?
Three Squirrels
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
I use adblock and don't see popups. Can someone give an example site where someone is getting around the popup blocking? It may be that I don't visit such sites, or it might be that I've configured adblock in such a way that the popups get blocked by that. In any case, I'd like to test this.
Can anyone provide a link?
Thanks!
Here's a direct link to the extension.
I'm waiting for the patch/extension that allows me to turn off flash banners like I can turn off images.
"If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit." - Mitch Hedberg
We will see. Now popups appear because they can mimick legitimate popups (showed after click). Very erratic and somewhat rare, but irritiating. And always (in my case) show behind actual page - so-called pop-unders. Funny thing - in school I've forced to use IE. What a unpleasant experience. Popups everywhere. No tabs. Mess on taskbar.
What modern Obelix would say today? Of course, "Those crazy Americans!".
You could fix this a long time ago by going to about:config, and changing the value of privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins to "2". I started using this since I've heard of it, and it haven't seen a popup since. I think it's nice that they've enabled this by default, or made it more accessible. They should make more of the settings in about:config accessible in an easier way.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I think one of the unsong advantages of Open Source is it responds to user wants, even when those wants conflit with business wants. Cookie management, image and pop-up blocking, and other privacy protections would never have been initiated by M$.
Just my $.02.
I'm not RTFA, but it's this bug
5
/., just copy the URL in the URL bar of your browser and go)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9403
(Bugzilla dislikes
It's opened in 2001 and not fixed as of now. There are those who argue that a fix is implemented as an extension, which I don't agree to.
But I have hardly any trouble with popups.
Maybe I don't go to the sort of sites that use them? Maybe I've just filtered those sites out of my brain?
I don't know but the only sites I see popups on are Sciam.com and NewScientist.com
Others might do it but I never notice.
However, I do get pissed off with those floating flash ads which hover over the body of the page. Those are f*cking everywhere these days.
If FF blocks those reliably then I'd be tempted to swap.
Pete
If I was an advertiser, I doubt that I'd try that hard to get around it. I'd prefer to advertise to people that actually click on the ads, making me money. But I doubt the average v1@gr4 peddler is that intelligent.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
They are one stop shopping for blocking the junk that clutters the web.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
not having Flash installed or Java enabled? How hard is that?
I'm always amazed at people who write in the Mozilla forums about the popups they are getting when using FF and my first question has always been: do you have Flash installed?
99.9% of the time the answer is yes.
Not sure why people think they need to have Flash installed since it's nothing but a resoure hog and rarely provides any extra benefit. As a poster the other day said, if I see the missing puzzle piece when I go to a site that means the site is using Flash and isn't a site I want to visit.
As far as java is concerned, it too is a resource hog and also provides little to no added benefit.
While the FF developers should be commended for their quick work on trying to beat down the horde of advertisers who think that an obnoxious popup is the way to get a message across, this issue is not a FF issue but a third party issue.
I run FF straight out of the box with no extensions and minor tweaks to the chrome file and I never, EVER, see any popups.
This just goes to show that the more crap people put on their systems the more things can go wrong.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This is a good point, the Adblock already does a better job than this proposed extension, since I never see popups to begin with.
I hate ads as much as anyone, but don't they pretty much fund most sites?
If the advertising companies ever cop on to the fact that many/most people never even see their ads, won't they drop them and leave unfunded?
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
A very useful windows freeware(non-OSS) that acts as a local proxy server with custom filters to rewrite web sites on the fly on their way to the browser. All Filters are written in a reasonably potent filtering language and new ones can be written and added.
b tnG=Google+Search
Possibilities include:
- some popup blocking
- convert within-frame links to normal ones
- convert embedded flash animations or other plugins to clickable links
- modify header information (referrer, browser name,version , caching meta tags)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=proxomitron&
It does block popups but it prevents me from manually override the block. It shows the URL in the popup blocker bar but when I click on it it still doesn't allow it to work.
Anyone else have it work like this? Guess I need to search bugzilla for this...
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I wouldn't know. Did IE update with Service Pack 2?
I've been too busy using Firefox.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I had to deinstall it just after installation :(
PrefBar lets you change your settings. I use it to filter out most flash, animations, JS and Java - then tick them when I need them. Combine that with Flashblock and Adblock and you've got a useful browser.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }
I'm using the Firefox Adblock extension, and it basically blocks all flash applications unless I tell it specifically to unblock one. I personally find this an effective solution because I don't mind clicking an extra time when I actually want to use an application rather than the thousands of times I don't. (And the ones that I use regularly are permanently whitelisted.)
In OpenBSD, I use the Dillo browser which has so few features this is not a problem.
Take off every 'ZIG' !!
Personally I am truly amazed at the extent to which advertisers will go to annoy me.
And I really want to know, how does this work? Who are the people who are willing to give money to a company so desperate to annoy them?
I have received the same/similar porn spam email 3 times a day for six months now. Is there ANYONE in the known universe who would ignore/delete such an email 3 times a day for six months, and THEN decide to pay the sender some money?
SitePoint
OK. So I have been seeing more popups in FF recently and I thought this might be cool.i ghtly/experimental/popupsdie/popupsdie.xpi), restarted, but using the Flash plugin test at http://chrisbenard.net/slashdot/ffpop.html I still get the popunder.
I installed the extension (http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/n
Am I missing something?
Isn't the whole problem with popups (as with so many other annoying or outright malicious software) caused from a lack of diversity or genetic stock?
Nature teaches organisms this lesson often; do we all stampede toward the same vaccination which will eventually fail, or quietly, subtly change our composition to present more diverse ranks which are more difficult to break?
That's a good example and one that adblock easily fixes.
I don't have examples but I've seen a few "pop-under" windows, a layer pretending to be a window shown on top of your page (but still inside the page you're reading). It can have pictures and links like a real pop-up but it can be easily killed by AdBlock.
I just installed Filterset.G for Adblock, and the first link I clicked on to test was Slashdot, and I see this story.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I notice that IE doesnt block automatic file downloads (unless -maybe (didnt have patience curiosity to test)- I explicitly tell it that I dont want to download files in Tools-=Options)
.. follow these steps .. and I guess people get suckered into it. I guess those people have to be wait until a better solution arrives for them.
Does firefox block those by default? I think lots of users click "install" by default and run into issues. But then again I have seen webpages that haccve flash animations saying
I'm shocked that so many people use Firefox, but not the Adblock extension. That's the first extension everyone on Earth should install, hell it should be integrated into Firefox!
www.sitepoint.com
just click on one of the articles and you'll get a pop-up.
I'm not sure about the rest of you /.'ers, but ever since I started using firefox with tabbed browsing, I have NEVER opened a second new FF window. I feel that somewhere in the code there should only be one way to open a new FF window, Right click > open link in new window. Maybe that shouldn't be the only way, but I think if it's limited in a manner like that, it would be impossible for popups to happen. Yes, that would mean disabling tags with the target pointing to _new and such, but I think it's worth it.
Maybe you're not new, but you if there's one thing you can count on at /., its for fsck'd moderation. Best you can hope for is an occassionally helpful link. If you want to continue to use IE (I beleive its neccessary for windows updates), try http://www.avantbrowser.com/ its a free "upgrade" for IE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
As with all news of this kinda thing, it's good news for the surfers and potentially bad news for the ad companies. It's too easy to forget sometimes that some sites rely on ads to stay afloat.
How many people are going to keep blocking ads until one of their site goes down from costs, then will they realise?
Business Voyeur
use the adblock plugin and block the offending javascript file causing the popup.
this sig has been discontinued.
If I was an advertiser, I doubt that I'd try that hard to get around it. I'd prefer to advertise to people that actually click on the ads, making me money.
Usually, advertisers just buy ad space. It's the companies selling them space that try to get around pop-up blockers. They get paid by the number of eyeballs they capture and couldn't care less if viewers are pissed off.
http://www.avantbrowser.com/ Is this a reliable condom for IExploder? Its not open source, but its free, and seems to work as advertised, and if I have to keep IE on XP anyway...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
Frankly, I haven't seen ads in a VERY long time, even those that are said to get around most ad blockers, including those that plague Firefox.
I've been a beta tester for more than a year now, and it is under active development, with a v5.0 release coming soon, which will add Linux support.
No spyware, install file under 150k, fast, unobtrusive, and chock full of options, including a custom filter list on the off chance that an option you'd like isn't included, or its sometime aggressive filtering breaks a page.
Also, it has the ability to install without the 'email developers' or 'live chat support' options, as well as the fact that it can be locked down with a password, making it well suited to your grandmother's machine or company systems.
One nasty thing I always get with flash, and sometimes in some other places, is input focus stealing.
That is very bothering because it wont, for example, let me scroll the page if the mouse is over a flash, or switch tabs with the keyboard.
Anyone knows some way around it besids dissabling flash/java-script?
errera hunamum ets
welcome our new popup-blocking overlords.
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
I have been getting popups that appear to be some sort of floating frame.
Its not a seperate window but it stays ontop of your page until you click close
My concern is that what they label as 'close' could in fact do something else (now validatd with the fact it a user triggered event)
Obviously I would like to block these.
I guess its some sort of style sheet magic, so could a user style sheet stop them? (w/o destroying the rest of the page's style)
Popup blocking does not stop ads on webpages, you can put all the banner ads any advertiser can want. You just cant force my browser to open windows.
Lets get this straight...
NO WEB AUTHOR HAS THE RIGHT TO DO ANYTHING OUTSIDE THE WEB PAGE ITSELF.
Whether it is cookie, a popup, or whatever. The web page owners right to control what I view ends at the borders of the web page. Any website owner who uses code to deliberately bypass my popup blocker is hacking my web browser and I should be able to prosecute both the web page owner(as an accessory) and the person who put the code in there. Is that clear enough?
Can we have an option in Firefox to block any and all inline Flash at all. There's no legitimate reason why it should be allowed. Really, there's none. I know I can remove Flash plugin but it still annoys me with "Hey-hoo! click here to download bloody Flash!!!" panel (who thought about it? I want him tortured ;) And then there are rarely flash games or something that could be ok when used full-screen.
Go to www.drudgereport.com and click on one of the news links. Ths almost always creates a new window even under Firefox.
i have to use IE for work, so I use a combination of things:
1) crazy browser, an excellent tabbed browser add-on that does exactly what I want. even better than firefox.
2) ad muncher, a very robust ad blocker engine that sits in your tray and blocks off unwanted ads. it has similar technologies to adblock extensions (wildcards to sites, etc)
just in case you guys are looking for something for IE..
But it's not like the technologies can only be used for obnoxious means. Hooray for the flash game that'll kill 10 minutes here and there!
Not to mention that if FF wants to be taken seriously by the mainstream it needs to have the options that give it an edge (in this case, pop-up blocking) but support those technologies an average end-user expects from the web (rightly or wrongly!). Sitting their going "It's a third party issue!" is so much more damaging to the growth of FireFox than actually implementing a fix to work around that behaviour.
Unfortunately there's nothing we can do about this way around. One of the eDonkey sites I visit does this; they make every hyperlink also trigger a pop-up. Absolutely no way around this unless FF and IE completely block all popups, even the ones you click on.
Presently popups are allowed in the onclick event. That's where one of the holes is.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The more robust technology becomes, the more we allow creative people to do creative things with it, the more annoying some of those creative things are going to be. We can arbitrarily ban certain actions which we think are more exploitable than useful, and maybe thats even a good idea, until you try to write an interface that can't get the user's attention when it needs to because interfaces which can get attention are annoying when the attention is wasted and the machine can't tell the difference.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
When is Firefox going to have Adblock built in? I see it as an essential extension, but most people won't go out of their way to download extra extensions. It would not come with a preloaded Adblock list so most people would just block ads as they see them. Can anyone tell me why they don't do this? Seems to me this would greatly increase Firefox's popularity.
YAY more work towards ad blocking! That of course is the most important thing to work on. We don't need security! We don't need stability! I want a browser that blocks every ad, crashes once a day, and has constant security holes!
Madrid, April 5, 2005 - A vulnerability has been detected in Mozilla Suite and Firefox that could be exploited by an attacker to access sensitive user data. The problem lies in the JavaScript engine of these applications and can be exploited to access parts of the content of the memory used by the browser, which could contain sensitive user data.
This vulnerability is confirmed in Mozilla 1.7.6 and Firefox 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, although other versions could also be affected.
Until a patch is released, a temporary solution is to disable the JavaScript support, although this preventive measure could affect the functioning of some web pages or may prevent them from being correctly displayed.
So moderators... How exactly is this redundant?
How about that's not a complete solution?
I never installed Flash or Java and I've been starting to get pop-ups. I'm thinking about surfing with Javascript off by default now, too.
"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; NetBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050325 Firefox/1.0.2"
Nope, adblock blocks 'em.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Integrating more robust Pop-Up blocking into Firefox makes good sense for the average persion.
The average person (the 87% still using IE) isn't up to tweaking the about:config or hunting down an Extension every time a new annoyance rears it's head. If Firefox is looking to take down IE, it needs to add integrate some features available in about:config or an Extension as defaults and/or directly into the Options menu.
I could not imagine expecting my Mom, or a project manager for that matter, to wrap their mind around an issue and then tweak about:config or find an Extension.
We are looking to take out IE, right?
I noticed a slight increase in the number of advertisements I see lately. It's up to a few per week, from zero.
/html/body/div#body/div#sponsor, and this would assume the #sponsor id is not variable.
I see two culprits, and this new popup blocking feature stops neither:
- Advertisers are steering clear of 'ad' and 'click' in their naming conventions, and some are even using their customers' image file or directory to display ads, in order to dodge host file-based and regexp-based ad blocking
- Floating DHTML divs are becoming widespread and are not blocked -- and probably cannot be blocked -- by current popup blocking techniques
Increasingly, setting the css display to none would be necessary for paths and sequences such as
Note the "Get Firefox" link in the left column.
Maybe because pagead*.googlesyndication.com blocks a major sponsor's revenue stream.
Since Mozilla stopped its development and focus on Firefox, am I going to assume future versions of Mozilla (higher than v1.7.6) won't get this enhancement? Thanks in advance. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
because I've been using the flashblock extension for a while now... works great!
Meh.
It exists for the sole purpose of persuading me to buy something I otherwise wouldn't buy.
Fuck that. I can make my own decisions about what I want to buy, thank you. We have too much consumer crap in this society anyways. 90% of everything is crap, so why do people buy it? Because of advertising, and for no other reason.
I don't watch television, I don't read magazines, and I hardly ever have to deal with ads. Blocking ads on the internet is an obvious next step, and the advertisers who lose revenue can go fuck themselves.
In Soviet Russia, the popup blocks YOU!
*ducks for cover*
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Which, to me, means that if you've been having any problems with legitimate sites and their popups, you can still get them to work if you wish.
Apparently it also blocks WANTED popups, even if you whitelist them.
From the blog:
Of *course* it blocks wanted popups, that's the whole point. Popup pushers have started hitchiking on the events we use to determine "wantedness". This extension is an experiment to see which is worse, the popups that are leaking through the current Firefox default settings, or not getting "wanted" popups. Obviously this will greatly depend on which sites you tend to visit so the ultimate result will probably be some sort of UI where people can more easily adjust the blocking level.
Back to the drawing board, though, on opening the popup from the infobar.
Posted by: Dan Veditz on March 31, 2005 11:11 PM
Put in a user-checkbox to:
1) disallow layering, or force items in different layers to be drawn at the bottom of the page, much like a word processor document page 2 is drawn below word processor document page 1 (this may be needed to preserve navigation items that are in the non-default layer).
2) disallow plugins from using screen space not reserved for them
The combination of the two will send a message to web design companies "don't even try this unless you want your web page to look bizzare on some customers' machines."
Granted, this could interfere with "good" things like menus that "floated" at the top of the page and other related items, but per-site and per-page exceptions will take care of this problem.
"Best viewed in any browser" is the idea web page for "general public" web sites anyways.
Too bad this is in the "easier said than done" category, but I hope someone or some group is up to the challenge.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Countless pop-up blockers but who stops the floaters? I hate those layers or Flash that fly around on the screen before they decide (maybe) to land in a banner somewhere on the page. It's even worse when it has sound. Stop the insanity!!
Firefox ALREADY HAD a popup blocker. What they borrowed from Microsoft was the top bar that allowed you to unblock a specific popup on runtime. Sometimes good ideas CALL to be borrowed (and thank God this one wasn't patented!)
Turning away visitors with offensive/pervasive ads... is what really shoots one's self in the foot.
I am really amazed with all these adblock, flashblock, pop-up block... Will it not cause the advertisers and other comapanies lose money and lead to another dotcom collapse. [sic]
No. The dotcom collapse had nothing to do with advertising and everything to do with over speculation. If you combined any noun with 'e-business' or 'online' VCs would just start throwing money at you. Most of these businesses didn't pan out and when the market got wise (at last) the bubble deflated.
A few years ago there was a pretty big depression in online ad rates -- that put a crunch on a few sites. As a result there was some consolidation, some sites went away, and most sites started running tip jars.
Finally, if sites are serious about surviving on advertising, and they know that pop-ups or singing Flash ads will drive away their visitors, then it is in the sites' best interest for two things to happen:
1) Apply pressure to their advertisers to stick with banners and such that don't drive away visitors, and
2) trust that their loyal visitors will employ pop-up and flash-blocking so that they can continue to patronize their site and don't harm the page-views and other traffic metrics that amuse in advertisers in the first place.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Real balls would have been to include a barbecue for jews and mohammed blowing his camel for the arabs...
Now THEN I would have been impressed.
You remind me of the person who is always at the tail end of a fad because he doesnt have any convictions of his own and just follows safely from a distance.
Grow a pair and come back to us.
You know that annoying scrolling bar that moves SLOWLY to the top? It's not the content that's annoying me. I'd rather have an ad-in-a frame that these moving (and bouncing) div's.
... use Links.
Netscape.com has a popup "iFrame".
I love the Drudge Report, but it has pop-ups that Firefox misses.
MadOgre.com
FlashBlock requires you to either actively maintain whitelists or take actions to display flash at all
... when I want them, I can have them, and in the vast majority of cases where I don't want them they don't bother me.
Which is exactly what I want. I wish they'd integrate flashblock's functionality into Firefox and apply it to ALL plugins: flash, java, real, quicktime,
I use the Ultimate Popup Blocker. The UPB utilizes neural network technology to recognize sites that produce popups. It "remembers" the site and refuses to go there again. It also compares sites about to be visitted with past sites visited and determins if annoying popups are likely. I they are it refuses to navigate the browser to the site.
I've been really pleased with the UPB, everyone should have one.
--
Etga a ainbra
Unfortunately, this plugin seems to block a neat little wordpress feature that allows you to automatically create a blog entry with a link to a site.
Mike Borella http://www.borella.net/mike
for all you linux people that hate ads... learn squid. CNN has never loaded so fast, or gotten less impressions from my house. Mu Hu Ha Ha :-)
use the allow none by default model, then only allow sites you visit. If you are a parent, this also keeps your kids out of the pr0n (whether accidental or intentional).
Allow google, and they have to come to you before getting into any sites in the results. You can also block outgoing port 80 and 443 at the firewall, squid can still get out. This keeps the kids from bypassing your proxy.
Yes, I am censoring what my kids see, and dang proud of the fact. Incidentally this will also keep them from getting to spyware download locations. All in all, its better for your home network.
I am spyware free for 2 years and counting.
l8,
AC
I don't have the problem because
I forbid totally flash
I forbid totally java
I restrict drastically windows operation from java script.
No exception.
And surprise surprise, I have no problem. I can even use an Internet browser to... browse the Internet. That's mind blowing, isn't it ?
I admit I lose some functionality. True. Too bad!
I must a stupid resistant user, not fashionable.
I accept well done advertisement: text, on the side, not intrusive. I even read it. I even click on links. Google does a good job at that.
Folks. Remember that, an issue in IT is overblown systems. Adding indefinitely extensions/patches/fixes shows there is a structural issue. Extending will eventually fire back at user for it augment complexity. This is IMO not a good peace of mind solution.
Mozilla Browser Javascript Regex Parsing Error Discloses Memory to Remote Users - Apr 5, 2005 Description: A vulnerability was reported in Mozilla Browser in Javascript regex parsing. A remote user can obtain portions of browser memory. The browser's javascript implementation does not properly parse lamba list regular expressions. The vulnerability resides in 'js/src/jsstr.c' in the find_replen() function. A demonstration exploit is available at: http://cubic.xfo.org.ru/firefox-bug/index.html
Remeber this and it will end. Never click on a popup if at all possible. It is usually a scam. Even it if its legit advertising, if everyone thinks popups are a scam, companies will get a bad name for using them.
i tried this new extension by going to http://www.popuptest.com/goodpopups.html and noticed that although it is very good at blocking unwanted popups, it doesn't work so well with popups that i would like to click. (by clicking on them) it still didn't work when i clicked on 'show this popup' on the firefox status bar..
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com
I use flashblock, a windows host file and firefox to help eliminate ads. Flashblock is a pretty nice extension it puts a play button in place of the flash ap, and then if you click the play button it will play the flash. I've only had problems when I attempt to load a .swf file directly. Other than that, it's pretty nice to only see the flash content I want. It can be annoying when you decide to read strongbad's emails...
We need a plugin that downloads all the data for the advert whether it be flash/google text/jpeg/java but doesn't display it. This way, it looks to the web server that the person browsing the website has got the ad flashing up in their browser window when in fact it's been blocked but also downloaded.
Put it in as default in Firefox and then we lead ourselves into a brave new web world. I really can't wait to see what happens. Microsoft is the only obstacle between us and a very grey internet future.
"Pop-ups that you want to occur" would include, say, the compose window of the IMP webmail client, as seen on SpamCop.net.
Sometimes I just wonder if it's more likely that Microsoft is just paranoid about being seen to stomp on others' business interests. Ad revenue for some businesses aside providing a decent popup blocker would almost certainly have driven at least several other companies out of business.
Several years of slackness have meant there are suddenly a lot of businesses in existance that profit on fixing gaps in Microsoft software, notably things that other Operating Systems tend to provide by default. For instance:
Whenever Microsoft does something to improve their products, someone's likely to be driven out of business because there are so many third party products out there that only exist to fill in Microsoft's shortcomings. Personally I think Microsoft is paranoid about bad press, and probably has an in-house policy to consider things very carefully before adding any bundled functionality that might be seen to clash with other established products.
a good filterset
Thanks for killing the site!
The Konqueror browser lets you do just that. You can set java, plugin, javascript, and several javascript properties for individual sites. To make the best use of it you have to decide if you want to use whitelisting or blacklisting for certain features. I have Java disabled by default, Javascript enabled by default, plugins disabled, and popup windows completely disabled. If a site needs requested popups, plugins, or Java enabled then I can enable whatever I need for that site in the site specific prefrences.
For what it's worth, a good bug at bugzilla to keep an eye on whenever there are popup problems is #176958. (bugzilla.mozilla.org not linked due to the block on slashdot referrals.) That's the main popups-not-being-blocked bug, and it has linked dependencies on all of the known specific popup bugs.
What does "legitimate popups" mean?
70e808a22cb027cde4a6abddf6435d55
I'm running FF, but even before with IE, I got a hosts file from http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html and put it in the proper spot on my WinXP machine and that took care of 99% of everything popup and ad-related.
Now I have a simple rule: if an advert is 100% static, no motion, no blinking, no fading, no nothing, I leave it.
Anything that blinks or moves, right-click and block images from that host. This way I am able to still view non-blinking adverts.
My theory is if everybody did this, then the ad companies would notice that their animated ads are not getting viewed as much and change to static ones.
'Course by then I'd still be blocking those servers; oh well; their bad business choice to start with!
PeachKisser
I wish it would get fixed since it's broken.. I turn *off* popup blocking and it still won't let them appear. I admin my photo site which opens a popup to adjust properties of photos. After 20 or 30 times of this Firefox will no longer allow them and the only cure is to close and restart it. Even when popup blocking is disabled.. Or when I click to allow them from this site either way... Has nobody else noticed this?
(Note: post title assumes skips a "counter-," assuming your responses were the counter-counter-counter attack. What the original attack was I've quite forgotten by now.)
Wow. I'm kind of new to Slashdot so it's still really novel to me to get intelligent responses to my writing so quickly.
It's only when you can't "vote with your feet" to punish a company for stupid decisions that really serious problems arise.
This is the essense of the problem with MS. Not that they are a business, but that they have a monopoly. And the goodness of The Mozilla Foundation is not that they are non-profit, but that they are trying to offer a viable alternative to one part of the monopoly.
I agree. I got carried away in my post; I probably came across as a utopian Slashdot commie (and got modded up by utopian Slashdot commies, for that matter ^_^). There's nothing wrong with self-interest, or capitalism...but MS takes these things to extremes that hurt all involved. Effective, moderate, "enlightened" self-interest considers how cooperation may benefit both parties; MS seems more like a childish playground bully in search of territory and prestige.
Or maybe, just maybe, there were already dozens of popup blockers written by 3rd parties available for IE for years.
I use IE exclusively and haven't seen a pop-up ad (flash or otherwise) for over 3 years.
A valid point, but...what is that axiom..."98% of users never change the default?" People have been able to turn of ActiveX for years as well, but that didn't help the spyware problem very much. Slashdotters generally know what they're talking about (OK...most of the time...), but don't forget just because you're here that the vast majority of users are intimidated and confounded by their computers.
You're being silly.
Guilty as charged.
If MS is, in fact, the evil corporation that you claim they are and "they put business interest first," then they had no reason _not_ to put a popup blocker in IE. Their customers are not the pernicious websites...
Yes, but I argued, and still contend, that they felt like they couldn't discriminate against popup advertising--not obscene or duplicitous popups, let's say, but the semi-benevolent kind you used to see at online news outlets. Microsoft, I think, believes that most or almost all businesses are at some level benevolent, even without checks placed on them to make sure they display the kind of healthy self-interest I descibed above. Hence "trusted computing." Hence ActiveX being able to wreak freaking havoc on the whole OS so that commercial websites can develop "interactive content." "Yep, surely they spend their days slaving away for the consumer, just like we do." *wink*
They just chose to not focus on delivering a customer desired feature for whatever reason (likely simple stupidity and assumption of superiority).
Short of dragging Gates in here, I can't disprove this. But could MS really be "stupid" for the entire duration of the popup problem, which has been growing steadily worse for years? Did it take that one episode of Aqua Teen Hunger force to clear it up for them? Again, it's possible, but unlikely. Also, you split an infinitive in there. Nyaaaaaah.
Because they "won the browser war". When 80-90% of the world uses your browser for a couple of years, you don't feel inspired to improve on it much.
This may also be true, and I can't disprove it either. However, it wouldn't have been "much" of a fix; MS made tons of (futile ^_^) security fixes, which probably involved complex testing, in that same timespan that it didn't give IE a simple popup blocker. Thus it did not consider a popup blocker necessary, which raises the question "Why?," which I attempted to answer.
Moving on... I think I've already addressed the issues in Pxtl's and minairia's posts. jesterzog's had the most insight of the bunch, and not just because of the mod points (which, I'm
I have the ultimate solution to web sites that try to get around my web browser's popup blocker (either Firefox, Opera, or Internet Explorer depending on my mood and OS). I simply click the back button and never visit that site again.
Popups are annoying and give me the impression that the sponsors using popups are annoying as well. Webmaster that use popups are either greedy or can't pay the bills with regular advertisments. If it is an informative site, then why should I trust them when they decieve me into viewing advertisements or visiting sites that I wasn't expecting? If the site is a merchant site, then they probably aren't reputable enough to do business with.
In any case, popups disrepect me, who as a visitor has all the power. Why should I care what the web site owner says or can offer me when the site opens windows I don't ask for or uses deception to get attention? These feelings induce me to hit the back button and mentally blacklist the companies involved in such behavior.
So my popup blocker - after built-in filters in my browser - is the back button. If the web site owners wants my attention they can earn it with on-topic advertisements that respect me the visitor.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
Well, if you have a way to run anything beyond 1.0 Firefox and AdBlock, do share. I'm expecting a response to the effect of "recompile it, silly" would suffice, but perhaps something else? AdBlock is great. I figured out filters to completely strip my Yahoo! account of its Yahoo! Personals ads, which I find particularly inappropriate marketing for married people and small children. That's the first time in a long time I've put two exclamation points in a single sentence.
Ahh well. Nice try, anyhow
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Have a look here:
http://castlecops.com/postt79253.html
Proxomitron the APP isn't being developed, but that's because the author died a couple of years ago. There are moves to remake it in open source:
http://proximodo.sourceforge.net/
However, none of that is the point.
Think of Proxomitron as an underlying technology which doesn't alter.
What alters is the filtersets, and those are bang up to date and constantly being refined.
So download Proxomitron, install a current filterset, and enjoy the web without all the crud from here on in.
Visceral Psyche Films
http://www.shareprovider.com
Just click on any link.