310052 - Add UI to set pref privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[John Robinson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7

Too many sites these days try to work round Firefox's pop-up blocker by
generating pop-ups from Flash or other plugins. Firefox has a pref,
privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins, which can be set to block pop-ups from
plugins. As Firefox is shipped (1.0.7) it's not set and there's no UI way to set
it apart from doing the about:config, add, integer, type stuff in way; this is
daft. Please can we have a checkbox or dropdown added in Options->Web features
under "Block popup windows". Please could you also make it default to "on"
(value 2) as pop-up blocking is already on by default.

(Entered as a bug not an enhancement because I think not having an easy way to
control this important bit of functionality is a bug!)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

the default isn't 2 yet, see bug 289341

Reporter, you might want to upgrade to Firefox 1.5 beta 1 (or the full version
later this year), where this is already set correctly. Without a UI though.

Comment 2

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

seems a fair request.
I expected this to be a dupe, but can't find it.
->New

Comment 3

[John Robinson]

I searched long and hard through Bugzilla before submitting this, as I too
thought someone else must have asked for it, but apparently not. I might try the
1.5beta sometime but I think this is substantial and important enough to warrant
going into the next 1.0 release unless 1.5 is going to be released very soon;
it's my impression that current users are liable to see more pop-ups with FF 1.0
(because of these plugin-generated pop-ups) than they do with
current/fully-patched IE6. Sorry I'm not enough of a programmer to do it myself!

Comment 4

[Jesse Ruderman]

I can't see this being a visible pref.  "Disable unrequested pop-ups, but let
some through"?  The default will be 2 soon.

Comment 5

[John Robinson]

Umm... what if the user wants to allow pop-ups? There should be a visible bit of
UI to allow them. I suppose if the main "block pop-ups" checkbox affects this
pref too, that might be enough. Is that what will happen?

Comment 6

[Jesse Ruderman]

Unchecking the main "block pop-ups" checkbox also allows pop-ups from plugins. 
I tested with http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/ and this pref set to 2
(which is the new default).