08 Sep 2005

Even Fewer Popups with Firefox

Still getting popups on some sites despite using Firefox with its popup-blocking enabled? Some are launched via Flash, so you might want to put a stop to that:

1. Put about:config into the address bar and hit Enter
2. Right-click within the list of preferences and select New > Integer
3. Enter privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins for the preference name and click OK
4. Enter 2 as the integer value and click OK

Preventing plugins from launching popups might cripple a few annoying designer portfolios, but I can live with that (or add specific sites to my whitelist). There are other devious ways to launch popups, but disabling them all, or all JavaScript, leads to far more inconvenience.

(This hint’s been covered already by numerous sites this year, but I know a lot of people still aren’t aware of it.)