Mozilla is testing a patch for Firefox that will block the new breed of pop-ups evading the browsers current barriers.
In recent weeks advertisers have managed to reintroduce pop-up and pop-under advertisements by using browser plug-in technology to launch them. The new patch for Firefox changes a couple of hidden preference so that plugins such as Flash and Java cannot open new windows and stops all Web events, such as clicks and form submissions, from launching pop-ups.
Anyone willing to test the patch can install the Popups Must Die extension. However this may mean that some user-initiated pop-ups may be blocked and there are also reports that the extension prevents the opening blocked popups from the yellow bar or popup blocker Status Bar icon. You can still whitelist sites that you wish to allow to use pop-ups.
The Mozilla Foundation notes that this is not the first time the pop-up blocker has had to be modified. Initially the feature simply blocked all popups triggered by page loads, page unloads and timeouts. Since then, it has been enhanced to block popups triggered by a wide variety of events and also limit the number of simultaneous popups allowed.
The developer hired to work on the Mac version of Firefox has confessed that at the moment there are better browsers for OS X.
'If it was the only browser available for Mac OS X it would get the job done nicely,' said Josh Aas, in interview with Germany's macnews.de, Josh Aas says.'If you want features that only Firefox has, then it does a great job (RSS integration, extensions). If you have standard browsing needs and you want an everyday browser, then there are better options out there at the moment. Firefox has a way to go in terms of looking and feeling like a native Mac application (though it is coming along nicely). It can also be a bit slow, particularly while launching, and has some bugs that are the result of major architectural problems with the Mozilla toolkit on Mac OS X.'
Nonetheless he adds that, 'All of this stuff is fixable, and Firefox is going to rock soon.'
The Pops Must Die Extension
http://mozilla.osuosl.org/pub/mozill...tal/popupsdie/
Firefox moves to block new breed of pop-ups
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