Like many of my friends, I switched from Internet Explorere to Mozilla Firefox in hopes of avoiding the mess of pop-ups, un-closeable windows, and other associated crap with that web browser.
Like many of my friends, I switched from Internet Explorere to Mozilla Firefox in hopes of avoiding the mess of pop-ups, un-closeable windows, and other associated crap with that web browser.
All it took was one experience, really, in 1998. I had been looking for some drivers for hardware. I was really digging hard. I came across a site that I thought had what I was looking for, and clicked the link.
Pop-up after pop-up for hard-core pornography popped up on my screen.
My boss chose exactly that moment to show up at my desk. She was not impressed with my explanation, nor my inability to close the windows when I tried.
I knew I had to find a way to stop the insanity, and began using early versions of “Mozilla”. Eventually, that segued into Firefox, and here I am.
After living several years in popup-free bliss, I’ve recently found that sites had begun being able to pop ads up on me again. It was really annoying! Finally, a few nights ago, I decided to research how they were doing it. It turned out, they were embedding the pop-up commands in Macromedia Shockwave Flash animations.
A lot of ads use Flash. It gives you nifty animations, small file sizes, and tends to disable the right-click functionality a lot of users use with various “ad-blocking” software. The thing I’ve always hated about these is how much CPU time they use up. I use a laptop, and when I come across a site with really Flash-heavy advertisements on it, I can hear my fan come on to try to put up with the heat generated by rendering these ads over… and over…. and over again.
Pop-ups were the last straw. I found the PERFECT extension for Firefox. It makes one simple change: Flash animations load, but do not automatically play. You have to click them to play them. Well, if they can’t play, they can’t issue the command to your browser to pop-up a window on you. They can’t start spouting gibberish at you when doing research on the web at your place of work. They can’t suck up CPU time playing the same boring, yet eye-catching advertisement over and over.
Download it here: http://flashblock.mozdev.org/.
Remember that, to install it, you may have to tell Firefox to allow this site to install software. When you go to the installation page and click the download link, a little bar will appear at the top of your browser window, indicating that Firefox stopped a program from installing. Click the bar, and follow the instructions to allow “flashblock.mozdev.org” to install software.
Now when I go to one of those Flash-animation-heavy web sites, I don’t worry about popups anymore. I don’t worry about Firefox sucking up 100% CPU and wearing out the fan on my CPU. And I don’t worry that my computer will suddenly start talking to me because advertisers thought it would be cute to have a talking ad. There’s just a little “play” button on every Flash ad, and I can still play my favorite Flash shows.
Overall, good times. Flashblock: it’s good for you.
— Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: And we heard him exclaim As he started to roam: “I’m a hologram, kids, please don’t try this at home!'” — Bob Violence