Firefox Beats Pop-Ups—Again

In the Broadway musical "Annie Get Your Gun," theres an annoying song, "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," that goes back and forth like two spoiled kids bickering.

Watching the back-and-forth battle between the purveyors of pop-up advertising and the browsers and plug-ins geared to stop the pop-ups is a little like sitting through this song—only with the added annoyance of pop-up ads.

In recent months, the pop-up advertisers have successfully worked around the blocking methods found in most plug-ins and in Mozillas Firefox and Microsofts Internet Explorer on Windows XP Service Pack 2. Theyve done this by using features in other browser plug-ins, especially in Macromedias Flash plug-in, to launch additional browser windows.

This, of course, has caused quite a bit of dismay among users who thought they were free from pop-up ads. But now that the pop-ups advertisers have said, "Yes, I can," its time for the blockers to say, "No you cant."

Users of the Firefox browser can now download a beta extension with the code name Pop Ups Must Die! In my tests, this beta of the new blocking features in Firefox successfully blocked most of the new pop-up methods without blocking most wanted browser windows.

To try the Pop Ups Must Die! beta, go to weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007903.html.

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