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A bit off topic, but could someone explain to me why it's so difficult for a browser (or extension) to effectively block 100% of all pop-ups/pop-unders? I reali

A bit off topic, but could someone explain to me why it's so difficult for a browser (or extension) to effectively block 100% of all pop-ups/pop-unders? I realize that these account for only a fraction of ads, but they are really annoying and it seems that these should be the easiest to detect; doesn't this essentially boil down to a few specific API calls? For the few cases that a pop-up/pop-under is legitimate (really, are there any?), I'd be fine whitelisting these on a case-by-case basis.

cozuya 12y ago
Effectively you're asking for all document.createElement calls to be blocked. Those are used for all sorts of things that aren't ads or popups. Blocking that would probably cause a very large percent of pages to be completely broken.
- alopecoid 12y ago
  So there's no explicit way to distinguish between "new window" calls from other types of calls? I'm kind of shocked that, with all the effort that's been put into browsers in recent years, that the ability to "create a new window" hasn't been removed entirely from the API without explicit user consent. Again, I can't think of a single site that uses this feature legitimately.
  - cozuya 12y ago
    If you're talking about actual new windows that are a separate process, those have been blocked by popup blockers for years. As far as popovers that block the screen/annoy you, those are just HTML elements that are positioned on top of normal content - its not a "special" thing backed into the DOM API. There's really no effective way to stop a page from being able to do that unless you disable javascript entirely.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      There have been tricks that get popups through, possibly by exploiting browser bugs or opening the popup in one of the few on* handlers where browsers allow them.
  - Steko 12y ago
    I use strict pop up blocker on firefox which works great. There's a toggle button in case a site doesn't work properly. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/strict-pop-up-blocker/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/strict-pop-up...
iza 12y ago
They generally get around it by opening the popup when you click anywhere on the page.

cozuya 12y ago

Effectively you're asking for all document.createElement calls to be blocked. Those are used for all sorts of things that aren't ads or popups. Blocking that would probably cause a very large percent of pages to be completely broken.

alopecoid 12y ago
So there's no explicit way to distinguish between "new window" calls from other types of calls? I'm kind of shocked that, with all the effort that's been put into browsers in recent years, that the ability to "create a new window" hasn't been removed entirely from the API without explicit user consent. Again, I can't think of a single site that uses this feature legitimately.
- cozuya 12y ago
  If you're talking about actual new windows that are a separate process, those have been blocked by popup blockers for years. As far as popovers that block the screen/annoy you, those are just HTML elements that are positioned on top of normal content - its not a "special" thing backed into the DOM API. There's really no effective way to stop a page from being able to do that unless you disable javascript entirely.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    There have been tricks that get popups through, possibly by exploiting browser bugs or opening the popup in one of the few on* handlers where browsers allow them.
- Steko 12y ago
  I use strict pop up blocker on firefox which works great. There's a toggle button in case a site doesn't work properly. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/strict-pop-up-blocker/?src=search https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/strict-pop-up...

iza 12y ago

They generally get around it by opening the popup when you click anywhere on the page.