I hate pop-up ads!

[baratron]

I hate advertising on the internet, but regard it as something of a necessary evil. If a site that would otherwise cost money to access can be made free by having ads on it, then that's something I can live with. But only if they're banner ads.

Lately, quite a few sites have started using pop-up ads which spawn a new browser window. The more annoying of them not only pop up new ads, but take over your desktop, crash your browser and eventually your window manager. Argh!

Comments

[chrismoose.livejournal.com]

I agree...
Some of them seem to pop up about 5 or 6 or more ads and my computer can't cope....

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I've turned off both Java and Javascript now. It's a pain not having them, but I am sick of these windows appearing. The worst thing is when a new window pops up and starts loading, so you move your mouse over it to close it, and it hides behind another window!

ARGH!

[mjl]

should be possible to turn of the pop-ups without turning off javascript altogether...

dunno what browser you're using, but opera 5 and netscape 6 (and other mozilla-based thingies) give you a way to turn off pop-ups without turning off all the script...

and if you're using something evil like netscape 4, then you could use junkbuster to get rid of them, although that's a bit more cumbersome...

apologies if that was a rhetorical rant and you didn't want people to tell you how to turn them off :-)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I'm running Mozilla build 2001062823 and it doesn't seem to have an option to enable JavaScript but disable popups - am I looking in all the wrong places?

[mjl]

ah... i just said there was a way, i didn't say there was an option...

what you want to do is add this line to your prefs.js:

user_pref("capability.policy.default.Window.open", "noAccess");

there's more info on the mozilla site about its Configurable Security Policies... i found this out from reading followups to a slashdot article

[babysimon]

Konqueror has an option for use-Javascript-but-disallow-popups too. It's Unix only but from your mention of a window manager, maybe that's OK...

[baratron.livejournal.com]

This machine is running linux. Either RedHat or Mandrake, I can't remember which we decided to go with in the end. The window manager is Gnome.

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

lynxlynxlyxnlynxlynx

Just an idea. :-)

lynx

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I use lynx a fair bit - for example, it speeds up eBay by an order of magnitude - but for things like LiveJournal I use the colours of links to see whether or not I've visited the page in its current form. For example, I scan older stuff quickly to see whether there are new comments or not. I can never remember how many comments there were last time I looked, but what I can do is see if the link is blue or purple. If it's purple, there's new stuff for me to read.

The new version of lynx that came with RedHat 7 does colour, but it doesn't seem to be definable anywhere. This is a pain, because the default colours are white, red and navy blue. I use a black background. Navy on black is not particularly readable, and I would love to be able to change it.

adverts

[meeping.livejournal.com]

In the same way adverts on TV now are at a louder volume than the programs, pop up banner ads are now larger (sometimes full screen) and I even experienced a musical one recently!