I have just discovered that FireFox now presents a bar across the top, similar to IE, when it blocks a pop-up, and there is a big options button (much clearer than IE) on the right which when clicked will allow you to view the pop-up, change pop-up settings to allow pop-ups for that site and a couple other options I can't remember. To the far right near the top of the bar is an X which can be used to close the bar.

Personally, I find it a little annoying - but others might like it.

Orange Blossom

What do you mean new? Has it not been doing it all along?

Not with Firefox on my computer, or at the university either. Not until the most recent update. Firefox blocked pop-ups yes, but I've never seen that bar at the top before, and there is a site I go to at least once a month that has a pop-up about finance charge information which was always simply blocked without any fanfare: no bars, no sounds, no nothing, just blocked - maybe just a quick flash as it was blocked, but that was it.

Orange Blossom

p.s. I thought I'd posted this in the Web-browsing forum.

This is what it looks like on mine. I have had it since I installed Fx on my new comp last winter.
So it was before any recent upgrade. Strange that you never seen it before Orange Blossom,
unless of course you are not surfing to sites that have them. IDK

I do know that even though it seems to work pretty good, I still have pop ups that
land in my sys tray and have had pop unders. I guess it doesn't prevent those.

Orange Blossom , displaying a message at the top of the browser window when a popup has been blocked is the firefox default setting. This makes me think that before you updated firefox , you has this "info bar" option turned off and the update has restored it.
I seem to remember that when the bar appears there should be a preferences button in the infobar which allows you to select “Don’t show this message when popups are blocked” .


The other , more technical option is to ( in firefox ) go to the URL: about:config
Search for the preference privacy.popups.showBrowserMessage.
Double-click on it, which should modify the value to false. ( default is true ).

No wonder Mr. Alpha was puzzled.

I have multiple pop-up protection on my PC, the browser itself, My ZoneAlarm Privacy Suite which is new so that's not the reason I haven't had pop-ups or pop-up bars in FireFox, Ad-Aware's Ad-Watch Pop-up Blocker...

Hey, I wonder if that's it! I didn't have Ad-Watch on when that happened. I'd unloaded it to make some registry changes and didn't load it back up before I went on line again - gulp, a big oops on my part. I don't like leaving that protection off. I'll visit the site again with it ON and see what happens.

Nope, that wasn't it. I got FireFox's pop-up bar this time, for only the second time in my experience - and yes it is like the one in your picture Scarlett.

Something's different, but what?

Orange Blossom

Yep, that was it . I went to about:config saw that the value was true and changed to false. Bar is now gone. This also tells me the University has Firefox set to keep the bar from showing also, unless it recently got changed. I'll have to check and see. Hmm. I wonder what I did to change it before? I didn't know about "about:config" until the animating smilie problem I had a couple weeks ago or so.

Thanks FifeFlyer, mystery solved .

Orange Blossom

You're most welcome.

A safe site for testing.

Thanks for the pop-up test page Scarlett. I tried it out, and I didn't get even one popup while using the Firefox browser. (I haven't tried it in IE because I don't use that browser unless I absolutely have to). I have deduced that this is partly because I do not have Java enabled in my browser, and also because of my privacy settings in the firewall which I have set to block all mobile scripts by default. My system does block some of the "good" pop-ups, but the site will always tell me if there is a pop-up with information that I need and I simply change my settings for that page or website, or do the work around to get the information. An example is the 'how finance charges are calculated' information on the site I visit at least once a month.

My Ad-Watch statistics say that it has blocked 25 pop-ups: I'm not certain of the time frame involved, but it is clear that my multiple layer approach against pop-ups is definitely working.

Orange Blossom

And your so welcome.