Pop-up Blocking in Mozilla and NetscapeWednesday August 14th, 2002CNET News.com has an article about pop-up blocking in Mozilla and Netscape 7.0. According to the report, the 'Open unrequested windows' checkbox won't be included in Netscape's next release. The piece, which includes quotes from James "Kovu" Russell, says that the option was removed because AOL relies on pop-up advertisements for revenue. However, Netscape 7.0 users can easily restore the feature. I had no idea that you can restore the feature, that's awesome. -JR Go here . . . http://ufaq.org/ns7/adblocker.html Does the *.xpi file work in only Windows or does it work in all the versions of NS7? I've installed in Netscape 7.0 on Windows, Linux Mac OS 9.2 and Mac OS X 10.1, and it works fine a treat on every platform. This might work as well for re-enabling the pop-up blocking feature in NS7: http://www.xulplanet.com/downloads/view.cgi?category=applications&view=prefbar I've been using it in Mozilla for a long time now and it has a lot of great non-pop-up related uses as well. I prefer this one for my friends (i use moz). So they can easily enable it if a site needs popups to fuction. Anyone noticed lately that some sites somehow beat Mozilla's popup blocking? First nytimes did it, then that was fixed. But lately I have been surprised by some popup windows. I dont remember specific URLs, but I have come across them in the last couple months. Has anyone else noticed this, and is it being worked on? It is fairly easy to beat Mozilla's blocking. Mozilla blocks pop-up calls coming from body's onLoad event. To beat it all you have to do is respond to the windows MouseMove event and pop-up a new window. www.cracks.am does it pretty effectively. Add the following entry to user.js in your mozilla profile directory... create it if it doesn't already exist (and it probably won't). It will be merged into prefs.js automagically, the next time mozilla is started. user_pref("dom.disable_open_click_delay", 1000); If you go to Kovu's blog http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/kovu/2002_08_11_archive.html#80255527 you can read how he got the author of the article to add a link to the adblocker.xpi file in the story. Actually, you can't because he's messed up his HTML but by viewing the source you can see what he meant to say: "Well, the story I mentioned earlier is finally out, and it's pretty cool, although my main profession is not 'Web editor', I've done Web editing, so I can take it. Note that after finding that there was a workaround to Netscape 7's lack of the feature, I let the writer of the story know and she put a link to the workaround in the story." I went to CNET and had a look at the new paragraph http://news.com.com/2100-1023-949572.html and then I noticed that some other changes seemed to have been made as well. However, the ZDNet article http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-949572.html didn't seem to have been updated yet (CNET and ZDNet articles are pretty much identical). This allowed me to make a full comparison (barring any original differences in the CNET and ZDNet versions): * The introductory paragraphs are slightly different (this may have always been the case as headlines/intros in CNET/ZDNet articles often differ). * In one case a comma became an em dash and in another a colon became an em dash (or maybe this difference was always there). * Mozilla users switched from being "a group largely comprising Web developers" to "a group that includes many Web developers". * The phrase "due out in May" was removed from the reference to Netscape 7.0 PR1. * "But this fact, analysts say, is blatant self-protection" became "That arrangement, analysts say, is blatant self-protection" and got its own paragraph (not too sure about this one as I seem to recall that the CNET article always used the latter phrasing). * The bit about the Google Toolbar lost its reference to the "onUnload" event and was replaced by a bit saying that Opera can also squelch pop-ups. * James Russell changed from being a "Mozilla convert since 1997" to a "Mozilla convert since the late 1990s". This was obviously an error in the original piece (unless Kovu used his time machine to start using Mozilla a year before the first builds came out). * A "representativefor (sic)" became a "representative of" (possibly the spacing error only ever existed in the ZDNet version). * Derrick Meins became Derrick Mains. * The updated CNET version later reminds us again that James Russell is a "Web editor" (even though he isn't) while the older ZDNet version does not. However, I think this difference may have always existed. Usually when CNET updates their articles they tag "updated" onto the introductory paragraph. However, this hasn't happened in this case. Although most of the changes are minor corrections, the stuff about the availability of the adblocker XPI is new content. Am I the only one who thinks that CNET should have noted that the article has been updated? (I bet I'm the only one to list all the differences!) Or am I just getting a little too tied up in this? Alex "Or am I just getting a little too tied up in this?" That, of course, was a rhetorical question. The answer is yes. And as I've made changes to MozillaZine articles without tagging them as updates, I'm also a hypocrite. Alex Perhaps this isn't the best place to ask this question, but on the topic of blocking things that some people may find annoying, how does one block referrals in Netscape 7? iCab and Opera have a feature that blocks referrals to all sites altogether or to all sites except those in the domain you're currently browsing. Can I do this in Netscape 7? Thanks in advance. |