Controlling Popups

Controlling Popups

This document explains all of the options available in Mozilla Firefox for controlling popups.

What are Popups?

Popup windows, or popups, are windows that appear automatically without your permission. They vary in size but usually don't cover the whole screen. Some popups open on top of the current Firefox window, while others appear underneath Firefox (popunders).

Firefox allows you to control both popups and popunders through the Content panel in Options. Popup blocking is turned on by default, so you don't have to worry about enabling it to prevent popups from appearing in Firefox.

When blocking a popup, Firefox displays an information bar, as well as an icon in the status bar. When you click either the Options button in the information bar or the icon in the status bar, a menu is displayed with the following choices:

* Allow/Block popups for this site

* Edit Popup Blocker Options...

* Don't show this message (info message) when popups are blocked

* (show a blocked popup)

Blocking popups may interfere with some web sites: Some web sites, including some banking sites, use popups for important features. Blocking all popups disables such features. To allow specific web sites to use popups, while blocking all others, you can add specific web sites to the list of allowed sites.

Blocking popups doesn't always work: Although Firefox blocks most popups, some web sites may show popups using uncovered methods, even when blocked.

Popup Blocker Options

The Popup Blocker Options are located in the Content panel of Tools > Options

From there, you can do the following things:

* Block pop-up windows: Deselect this option to disable the popup blocker altogether.

* Exceptions dialog: This is a list of sites that you want to allow to display popups. The dialog has the following choices:

o Allow: Click this to add a web site to the exceptions list.

o Remove Site: Click this to remove a web site from the exceptions list.

o Remove All Sites: Click this to remove all of the web sites in the exceptions list.

Note: Blocking popups may not always work and may interfere with some web sites.