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Firefox Improves Pop-Up Ad Blocking

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the it-makes-me-sad-that-this-is-necessary dept.

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."

4 of 464 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Counter-counter-attack by TheRealFixer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At least, thankfully, Mozilla DOES respond. How many years did it take for IE to finally even get pop-up blocking?

  2. Shooting one's self in the foot? by CleverNickedName · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  3. Insightful? by SFA_AOK · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I can understand that not everybody wants Flash and Java functionality when browsing the web. I hate sites that are all flash.

    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.

  4. Re:Counter-counter-attack by happymedium · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Absolutely correct... and IE could have had a popup blocker all along; it's not like it would be hard for MS to code. So why didn't they? Probably because they believed in the ridiculous philosophy that intrusive popups are a legitimate source of ad revenue. It was, or should have been obvious to them what their consumers wanted, but MS being a business (unlike the Mozilla Foundation), put business interests first. This is the same reason that Windows Media Player is loaded with DRM. MS only caved on the popup blocking issue because FF, which included blocking by default, started gaining market share as IE's reputation tanked. Self-interest alone drives IE's development, whereas FOSS developers tend to actually care about the people who use their programs.