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Mozilla Working On In-Page Popup Blocker For Firefox (androidpolice.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cease-and-desist dept.

Firefox is working on a blocker for annoying in-page alerts that often ask you to input your email address to receive a newsletter from the site. "The feature is still in the planning stages, but Mozilla is asking users for any examples of sites with annoying pop-ups," reports Android Police. "Mozilla wants to make Firefox automatically detect and dismiss the popups." From the report: If you know of sites that use in-page popups (whether it be newsletter signups, surveys, or something else), you can fill out the survey here. There are also Firefox and Chrome extensions that make the process easier. I'll be interested to see how Mozilla pulls this off, it will no doubt be difficult to detect the difference between helpful and not-helpful popups.

5 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Helpful Popups by mentil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    it will no doubt be difficult to detect the difference between helpful and not-helpful popups

    There is No Such Difference! Kill 'em all, let FSM sort 'em out.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Helpful Popups by mentil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Right now Firefox blocks popup windows with a message that the site wanted to open a popup, with an 'open anyway?' prompt and 'ok' button. The same functionality could be reused for in-page popups, with an option to permanently whitelist the site.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  2. notifications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Already can be done with about:config. Works about 95% of the time.

  3. Tracking blocking by tepples · · Score: 2

    Sometimes I submit a support request that a website mistakenly detected the tracking protection built into Firefox as an ad blocker. I tell them that I see ads hosted by the publisher,* such as those on Daring Fireball and those on Read the Docs, and sometimes I click ads hosted by the publisher. But I don't blindly accept scripts that allow third parties to insert arbitrary proprietary scripts that track my "click-stream" from one website to another in order to build an interest profile and try to sell me things I just bought. If a site's ad script requires such tracking in order to run, the site needs to fall back to publisher-hosted ads. Even if publisher-hosted ads have a lower CPM than interest-based ads based on tracking, it's still more than the zero that a site gets if I leave after hitting its adblock wall.

    * In the web advertising market, a "publisher" is the operator of a website on which advertisements appear.

  4. Excellent! by bazorg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A while back I started to get pop ups of this type that clearly identify when I'm about to close the tab (they probably check the mouse movement).
    I imagine it's highly effective in getting attention, but once again (for the millionth time), being inconvenient is not an acceptable way to get attention. Being user-unfriendly like that only leads to continuing an arms race, and I'm happy to see Mozilla working on this sort of thing once again.