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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
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.
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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.
At least, thankfully, Mozilla DOES respond. How many years did it take for IE to finally even get pop-up blocking?
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.
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.
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
They are one stop shopping for blocking the junk that clutters the web.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Advertisers may not be that worried about Firefox in particular. Remember that it still only has 5% market share or so against the IE monolith, thus a smart advertiser would spend more resources exploiting IE. When Firefox becomes more popular, that's when we really have to start worrying.
However, couldn't there be a definitive end to this battle in which one browser essentially stops popup windows completely? There are only so many ways to load the damn things, after all. I thought (correct me if I'm wrong) that popups have gotten more press in the last month or so because more people started using Flash to open them. That quickly got blocked by a FF extension. The recent renewal of interest in the issue doesn't necessarily mean that popups are impossible to get rid of.
I find Flashblock to be sufficient for my needs. It allows you to turn it completely on or off, and a whitelist of sites. It replaces flash animations with a button which you can select to play the flash animation.
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&
Ah, a bigot. I love bigots. I used to see people who were bigoted about race, or even religion, but now I'm seeing more and more technology bigots. They're no better.
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."); }
Remember that 5% is still 1 in 20 visitors, advertisers still care about these kinds of numbers and will try to get around it.
Just because your paranoid doesn't really mean they aren't out to get you
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!
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.
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.