233946 - Advertainment (e.g. flash etc) cannot be stopped, need "unload" button (recursive stop behavior)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 11875

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Robert White]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031007

Flash "advertainment" (etc), particularly on tacky over-advertised sites, often
cannot be stopped.  This represents a two-tiered attack on the browser
perpetrated by the offending web sites.  When dealing with Flash, in theory one
can right-click on the Flash pane and un-check “loop” and “play” to stop the ad.
 Some flash ads even “hide” the loop and play options outright.  In the abusive
case this causes the advertisement to start over instead of just stopping
(sometimes after a delay).  I infer that Flash has a “when finished” or “after
delay” function or the frame that holds the flash is reloading the flash as a
separate push operation.

Clearly Flash (and similar plug-ins) must obey some well-defined unload/stop
behavior when the user navigates away from a page else-wise hilarity would ensue
when you moved on.

I propose that the stop button (or a new button, or a drop-down next to the
start button a-la forward and back, or a hot-key or something “unscriptable”) be
added/modified so that, when operated, the browser would traverse the document
tree and unload-as-if-leaving all the plug-ins.  (And if stop doesn't already do
this, stop all the refresh/push/update after delay activity as well.)

The reproducability is “sometimes” in this bug because the nastiness seems to
vary by ad and the ads are rolling out too frequently.  For reasonable
repeatability start at fark [http://www.fark.com] and follow some/any Yahoo News
link(s).  Look for animated snow or hearts (etc) in the ad.


Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

an extention for this (and more) already exists:
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/prefbar
resolving as dup of bug 11875

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 11875 ***