Join the Mozilla’s Test Days event from Dec 2–8 to test the new Firefox address bar on Firefox Beta 134 and get a chance to win Mozilla swag vouchers! 🎁

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Websites "need" pop-ups??

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by ubty

more options

Taken from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pop-blocker-settings-exceptions-troubleshooting#w_is-it-a-true-pop-up-window

"Certain events, such as clicking or pressing a key, can spawn pop-ups regardless of if the pop-up blocker is on. This is so that Firefox doesn't block pop-ups that websites need to work."

So, your pop-up blocker is no pop-up blocker at all. Or am I supposed to follow links without clicking? Did you not care to fix this idea because ABP does the real blocking anyway? Basically you say, a website defines the "need" for a pop-up by something that can be clicked. So, which website on earth does *not want me to click something?

Honestly, for about 10 years I thought that you, Mozilla, were simply "allowing" the pop-ups because of a bug, an exploit, flash, or something you can't do anything about. Now I read by chance that you simply decided to do so on purpose. It's crazy. :) The chance that this blocker would work is zero.

Taken from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pop-blocker-settings-exceptions-troubleshooting#w_is-it-a-true-pop-up-window "Certain events, such as clicking or pressing a key, can spawn pop-ups regardless of if the pop-up blocker is on. This is so that Firefox doesn't block pop-ups that websites need to work." So, your pop-up blocker is no pop-up blocker at all. Or am I supposed to follow links without clicking? Did you not care to fix this idea because ABP does the real blocking anyway? Basically you say, a website defines the "need" for a pop-up by something that can be clicked. So, which website on earth does *not want me to click something? Honestly, for about 10 years I thought that you, Mozilla, were simply "allowing" the pop-ups because of a bug, an exploit, flash, or something you can't do anything about. Now I read by chance that you simply decided to do so on purpose. It's crazy. :) The chance that this blocker would work is zero.

All Replies (2)

more options

Some web sites do use pop-ups. Some for displaying data, password input, and so on. It's the bad pop-ups we want to be rid of. Ads, ad traps . . . .

more options

I see, it's not that easy that I tried to make it look like.

But I still don't understand how clicking and key strokes are the way to distinguish the data, password input etc from ads. I mean, I really get a lot of ad pop-ups that are on-click, and I can't remember when I have seen a site creating a useful pop-up. Actually, I see no point that the pop-up blocker exists, when all that it blocks is - for me - nothing, .. assuming that non-interaction pop-ups have virtually died due to exactly this type of blocker. Ok.

Anyway, there is ABP. I don't really have a point. But calling the thing in FF "block pop-up windows" and it does not really anything useful... meh.