Firefox "Popups"

[Bigaldoc]

This is probably an old and stale subject for many of you, but I have Firefox options set to block popups with the exception of a few sites. For example, I didn't know about this Lounge and the PM popup, so I've put in an exception for Eileen's Lounge.

Anyway, there are a few sites that occasionally open advertising windows such as my local paper, the Merriam-Webster dictionary and a few others. How do they do that and can I stop it? In a manner of speaking, maybe they're not popups in the true sense because they end up minimized on my task bar. I can see the "brief flash" when it happens and then it's on the task bar so I have to close it. I'm sick and tired of Netflix ads or those offering to help me find classmates!

    

[HansV]

Do you use the NoScript add-in? This catches most or all popups/popunders that the popup blocker misses.

[Bigaldoc]

Do you use the NoScript add-in? This catches most or all popups/popunders that the popup blocker misses.

Thanks Hans. No, I don't presently have it installed. I tried it a year or two ago and it was driving me crazy like training a new firewall, so I got rid of it. I guess I'll have to try it again and be more patient about teaching...

[HansV]

It's true, in the beginning you have to tell it which bits to allow each time you visit a website, but in my experience, it stabilizes pretty quickly.

[Bigaldoc]

Wow, I just installed it and look at this partial list of "whitelisted" sites! Hotmail? Whatever for... Kentuky.Com is the primary domain name of my local newspaper, so I can only imagine that the reason it's in there is from my old, old tryout of this addon. I deleted the entry.

I do see at the bottom of the list where I just OK'd this Lounge and another forum I'm registered in because I had those two tabs open when Fx restarted. But the whitelist is LONG! Some of them (like a number of Google entries) I have no idea why they're in the list. I wonder if I should delete all except the ones I just did and start from scratch? Is there a chance I'll be "crippling" someplace that I don't want to lose?

[HansV]

I started out with a very short whitelist - mostly about:... pages, and gradually built it up.

[Bigaldoc]

Sorry to be a pest about this, but I really am a "newbie" at this kind of stuff! This may be why I removed the addon back the last time I tried it. I just went to the web of my local newspaper (Kentucky.com) and look at the list I got. It blows me away because I have no idea which ones to allow and which to block! I never heard of most of these. What do most of you do in these instances? Do you now do research on some or all of the URLs or is there a safe and quick way to deal with this "training" period?

[HansV]

I generally allow the main site if I trust it (and google analytics, if present - this provides the webmaster with statistics about visitors to his site), but leave all other scripts blocked until I find that the site won't work without them.