202394 - add popup manager blacklist to Firefox

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Tom Jac]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030408
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030408

Tools... Popup Manager... "Block Popups from this Site" is missing
(like Image or Cookie Manager)


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:


Actual Results:  
It is imposible to use a blacklist for popup blocking.


If somebody wants to use few sites with anoying popups, it is impossible to
create a list of all the allowed popups.
(Sorry I dont know is a bug?)

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

the blacklist is removed, see bug 195924

Comment 2

[Adam Egger]

Matti, that's actually why we *did* file this bug, see danm's comment on bug
195924 (#21). Reopen?

Comment 3

[Olaf]

I would like to see this bug reopened, see #204419

Comment 4

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

reopning

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

-> Danm

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 204419 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

*** Bug 210144 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Dan M]

Oh. This is the "please reinstate blacklists" bug I hinted at in bug 195924
comment 21. The point behind this bug I believe is to be a lightning rod and
vote bucket for dissent about blacklist removal.

Here's the thing. Mozilla 1.4 is so close to release that there's no chance this
change will make it in. After 1.4 the front end will be replaced by Firebird
(see http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html). Firebird has never had a popup window
blacklist: it's always been just the white-. So the only thing left to do is to
try and get blacklists added for the first time to the new front end.

The Firebird front end is more tightly controlled than Mozilla's was. Not just
anyone can influence it. I'm reassigning this bug to someone who can and
adjusting the subject line.

Comment 9

[Robert Mohr]

So is this moving to the Firebird component?

Comment 10

[Daniel Kabs, reporting bugs since 2002]

Blacklist is definitely a wanted feature.

Example: If you use the browser to do cruical tasks, e.g. online banking, you'd
rather want to have a blacklist in order not to miss the important pop-up from
your banking server.

Comment 11

[Dan M]

Some people want blacklists, some people want to not have blacklists. Clutters
up the UI and all that. Importantly, the folks in charge of the UI for both
browsers are in the latter camp.

Robert (comment 9): What I said in comment 8 about the Seamonkey suite being
replaced by Firebird after 1.4 obviously hasn't happened. That plan seems
permanently sidelined. So this remains an issue on both browsers. However a
separate Firebird bug isn't appropriate at this time.

This issue has already been raised a few times and shot down (bug 201720, for
example). The point of this bug is to hang around and collect votes to try to
determine just how missed blacklists are. At 10 votes and an even shorter cc:
list in 8 months, this bug hasn't gone unnoticed but it doesn't really support
the notion of a groundswell of popular support. I anticipate this bug joining
its "closed invalid" kindred.

Daniel (comment 10) I think what you wanted could also be accomplished using a
white list, no? "Block everyone except my important banking server." Still, it's
a matter of personal preference and clearly some folks would prefer a blacklist.
I suggest, rather than trying to convince the UI owners to make blacklists part
of the main build, that someone write an extension
(http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/).

Keep in mind there is another competing proposal that does have the UI owners'
approval. It's not blacklists but it would allow an individual blocked popup to
be unblocked after the fact. See Mozilla bug 198846 and its Firebird twin bug
176564.

Comment 12

[Olaf]

> Some people want blacklists, some people want to not have blacklists.
> Clutters up the UI and all that. Importantly, the folks in charge
> of the UI for both browsers are in the latter camp.

So? I am a *user* of Mozilla, and what is worth all that development efforts
when this browser does not offer the features that I, a user, wants? Speaking
for me, I still use nothing newer than Mozilla 1.3.1 - the last browser that was
not crippled. I checked 1.6b today - still a no-go for anybody who is annoyed of
unknown, immediate popups and wants to block them on-the-fly.

Speaking for me, I am stuck with 1.3.1 as long as this bug is not fixed. And it
*is* a bug when a great feature that other browsers don't have is removed. And
it had been removed. Don't tell me that it is still there, I know that, but in
day to day's web surfing experience, it is *completely useless*.

Just my 2 cents,
Olaf

Comment 13

[Marco De Vitis]

Are there any news about this bug/feature, now that 1.0 is approaching?
It might seem strange, but this is more or less the only annoying thing about
Firefox I can find, and I find it to be QUITE annoying.

I'm not that much against popup windows (I suppose it greatly depends on what
kind of web sites you usually visit), I currently have 137 URLs in my whitelist,
and it is growing every day. Instead, using a blacklist I could probably be
happy by blocking no more than 5-10 URLs. Actually, I can currently only think
of ONE web site which I want to block.

Maybe this is a job for an extension, you're right. But I have no idea how to
develop one. :-/

Comment 14

[Dan M]

Well, the current owner of this bug is also the head UI honcho for Firefox. It's
up to him.

comment 12:
> So? I am a *user* of Mozilla
Surely you understand that the point of Firefox is *not* to have something in
its base UI to satisfy every possible user, favoring extensions instead.

This bug has several votes. Maybe someone should step up and write the extension.

Comment 15

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter "spam" on "guifeatures-nobody-20080610".

Comment 17

[karl155]

Maybe many people (like me) did not find this bug because it is called "popup manager", not "popup blocker". Can somebody rename it?

Here my (slightly modified) bugreport from the duplicate:

When Firefox' popup blocker was released it was very effective. But now
websites got used to it and found ways to still open their advertising popups,
making the popup blocker more and more useless.

Example:
<a href="file.zip"
onclick="window.open('http://advertisement.example/', '_blank', 'width=400,height=300')">Download</a>

Clicking the link on a site does not only start the download, it also opens an
unwanted advertisement popup.

The existing popup blocker mainly relies on a whitelist of websites which are
allowed to open popups and an event list (dom.popup_allowed_events).

I would like to see option to blacklist sites, that they are never allowed to
open popups, even when the event list would allow the popup. To do this the
existing popup whitelist (it is a standard allow/block dialog with block
disabled) could be extended to allow blacklisting. The UI change for the user
would be minimal, because the only thing that would change would be the new
block button in the popup preference dialog.

Summary of things that need to be changed:
- Reenable "block" in the popup preferences dialog, and change description
  (1 line JS code and 1 localization string)
- Check against the popup-blacklist before the "dom.popup_allowed_events" check
  (a few lines C++ code extending the whitelist check)

Fortunately the guys who made the Website specific preferences forget to remove the blacklist function. So it is still possible popup-blacklisting a site (but without any function).
Because of this the complete change will minimal.

With my proposed change the popup blocker would behave more like the integrated
image blocker and the integrated cookie blocker, which are also allowing a whitelist and a blacklist.

If you don't want to implement this please consider: what are the disadvantages in implementing this?
- Implementation work? No, less than 10 lines of code.
- Performance? No, the whitelist check already exists.
- UI Mess? No, only one little extra button in the Exeptions dialog next to
  the "allow" button (remember the button in the site prefs is still there)

As you can see this change should hurt nobody, but it will help many users who are annoyed of advertising popups.

Comment 18

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

2003 was a long time ago - we have no plans to adjust this UI (but it's quite possible for an add-on to provide this kind of functionality).