Comments for Unwanted Flash popups

Comment from Nik on 2003-04-05

2003-04-06T05:14:26Z

Easy solution: dont run flash. And if you really really really have a need to see the latest o-so-funny flash movie that a co-worker has just sent you and 250 other people, then flick to another browser.]]>

Comment from Dan Hartung on 2003-04-06

2003-04-06T13:01:10Z

It's always been clear that there's at least one loophole, because the Mozilla pop-up protection has never worked at the New York Times. There's a Bugzilla bug report on it somewhere. The NYT method seems to involve regular old Javascript, but perhaps works because it's modularized. I haven't investigated closely.]]>

Comment from - on 2003-04-07

2003-04-07T15:13:35Z

Flash is often miss-used, and is thus not well understood by most people. Yes, flash can do some crappy animations (which is what it was intended to do in the first place), but it can also be a formidable programming tool, more suported than java.

It is sad that flash is abused in this way, which makes its reputation suffer, but this is no reason to turn it off.

Flash delivers valuable content which I don't want to miss, and I can live with a popup or two. Don't forget that the sites that send you popups are free because of these adds (even though they bother us). Stop living in the free web bubble and realise that the web costs something, wether you like it or not.

And flash shouldn't suffer from this.

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Comment from John Dowdell on 2003-04-07

2003-04-07T17:51:30Z

Re: "That is NOT supposed to happen!"

I don't know the intent, promises, or implementation of the links you mentioned. But I do recall that somewhere in Mozilla's docs they describe the specific JS events they block for new windows.

This doesn't mean that all JavaScript handlings for opening new windows are defeated... if an advertiser wanted then I believe they could just set a timeout to avoid that popup pref. Few do, likely because: (a) popunders aren't perfectly persuasive; (b) few advertising targets use Mozilla; and (c) fewer still have found that Prefs setting.

A SWF wouldn't need to use the browser's script/object intercommunication scheme (whether Java-based LiveConnect or ActiveX Scripting) to open a new window. It would just request a new window. I don't recall seeing advertisers annoy people by opening popunders this way.

In this case, it seems the site you visited wanted to display some of their own presentation in their own window. I don't usually like that presentation style myself, but this doesn't seem like a generalized advertising technique specifically designed to beat the JS popup pref in Mozilla.

Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromeida Support

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Comment from anon on 2003-04-08

2003-04-08T11:07:38Z

Nik, you silly silly little man. If you want your version of the internet to stay locked in the late 90's where you celarly are then stick with what your doing. By Not running flash your are denyying your self active to a richer experience and increasingly a richer content platform.

Advertsing and the internet are here to stay period. If you dont like it - go play with your imaginary girlfirend or somthing.

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Comment from Jesse Ruderman on 2003-04-09

2003-04-09T11:51:35Z

If Flash does not decide to play well with pop-up blockers, advertisers are likely to abuse that. I predict that one of the following will happen:

a) Browsers will block all window.open() calls from Flash.

b) Some users who would not have blocked Flash otherwise will block Flash, making all more legitimate uses of Flash suffer slightly. Hopefully they will use "non-lethal" methods of blocking Flash such as XBL "click to play Flash animation" placeholders or per-site blocking with whitelists or blacklists.

The Bugzilla entry is bug 150340, "plugins don't obey the 'Open unrequested windows' pref".

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how to make popups that work in mozilla

2003-04-05T23:18:03Z

http://www.bradchoate.com/past/001500.php...

Using Flash to Circumvent Popup Blocking

2003-04-07T03:53:00Z

Brad Choate recently expressed his displeasure with the fact that people (namely evil marketing people) are now using Flash to lauch pop-up windows with fscommand and thereby circumventing the pop-up protection in browsers like Mozilla and Safari. This...