This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I don't love the title. They have continued to block pop-ups. They didn't keep up with the arms race when websites designed something new that acts like a pop up and is a lot harder to block. And even then, an ad blocker, which some browsers implement does some of the legwork
The title to me implied the initial blocks had been removed which seemed odd since most browsers still offer that per page
Thanks for the TL; DR. This was helpful.
I didn't want to click that link and I'm happy that I didn't.
They didn’t keep up with the arms race when websites designed something new that acts like a pop up and is a lot harder to block.
The "Behind the Overlay" extension for Firefox and Chrome doesn't have the ability to intelligently detect whether something is an desired overlay or an undesired overlay, but it can pretty consistently, with a click on its button or a keyboard shortcut, remove them.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/behind_the_overlay/
I imagine that someone could probably make something fancier, with a lot of logic, kinda like Dark Reader or something, to guess whether a given overlay is "obnoxious" and just hide it by default.
Yes one million times! Mozilla, get on it! Or, looking at the current landscape of browsers, someone with some free time please implement it in a firefox fork :(
I for one dont see these pop ups; I just block all javascipt in websites using noScript and unblock just the absolutely necessary stuff. Doesnt work all the time, but it works well enough for me.
waterfox exists
and ublock origin works (time lag to fight new methods permitting)
honestly in stream ads are the current real hurdle
All the pop-up blocking that old web browsers had is still a thing. It's just that most websites no longer make their pop-ups as separate browser windows that pop up via timed script, because that's easily detectable and blockable.
Nowadays, they'll form a pop-up using additional fixed-position s, or form what's functionally a redirect by creating what, to the web browser, looks like a giant link that opens up in a separate tab, or do other sneakier techniques, which are much harder to definitively detect as "a pop-up" and block without causing legitimate web pages to break.
As the web is becoming more and more a platform for full-on applications, you can't really determine which functionality will only be used by ads or malware. There are projects like Gemini, which deliberately aim for a minimalist set of features that can only be used to deliver simple content with no intrusive additions, but these won't serve as a complete replacement for the web.
