I had the exact same problem, but it wasn’t the pop-ups, it was the resetting of the homepage to something like out-true.counter.com redirecting to some place called globefinder.com.
It totally pissed me off and slowed down Internet capabilities, such as typing, scrolling and copy/pasting.
It got rid of the hijacker program that reset the homepage and gives some details in how not to get re-infected so to speak after you finish using the program.
It also has built in pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing, and it doesn’t have an annoying banner bar like the free version of Opera. Also, Firebird windows seem to open up faster on my machine.
Firebird is a lightweight, just-the-facts-ma’am, no-unnecessary-bloatware browser built off the Mozilla codebase. Popup blocking is installed by default. Tabbed browsing is excellent. They have an extension that blocks Flash, replacing any annoying Flash applet with a grey box saying “click here to see Flash”
Perhaps my favorite feature is that I can right-click on any image and say “block images from this server” – bye-bye, Doubleclick.
Ive had the google toolbar for a long time now. Does it automatically block pop-ups or is it an added plug-in thingy?
Also: How do pop-up blockers distinguish between annoying pop ups and those that are part of many sites that use them legitmately to fill out a form, etc…
Well, I’ve been using LavaSoft’s AdSubtract for a while and you can configure it to allow pop-up windows on sites that you select. Just one click on the control panel. Or you can manually set which sites are allowed to have pop-ups. Kind of a hassle, but worth it for sites that you visit regularly.
For quite a long time I was using Pop-Up Stopper from Panicware. That tool had a fairly aggressive approach to blocking popups, but you could always override it by holding down the control key when clicking. I am pleased with the Google toolbar’s effectiveness – it does seem to know how to separate the wheat from the chaff fairly well.
Oh man, it appears I haven’t checked the functionality on the Google tool bar for a while. I’m already obsessed with watching the pop up block count and Google Zeitgeist has to be the coolest thing ever.
I don’t think MS could get away with dropping support for older browsers: the security problems would be even worse than they are at he moment. I think he’s referring to MS’s announcement that no new versions of IE will be available for download: if you want the newest version you must upgrade your OS.
I looked into this and it looks interesting. What exactly makes a browser fast? What does IE have that might make it slower?Also, what are the differences between their standard browser and firebird?
You can do the same thing with the Google toolbar, just FYI - hold down the Ctrl key and click a link that you need to launch a popup, and it’ll allow that one to launch.
*What exactly makes a browser fast? *
Good coding & good (minimal) design.
What does IE have that might make it slower?
Mediocre coding & poor design (featuritis – too many options – jack of all trades, master of none).
*Also, what are the differences between their standard browser and firebird? *
Mozilla is a combo package, containing a browser, email reader, Newsgroup reader, chat room client, and html composer. Their current design plan is to split this combined package into separate (but easily linked) pieces for each function. Thus the new Firebird is only a browser. Thunderbird is the new email reader piece. And the others are being worked on. This reduces the size & complexity of each piece, and generally speeds them up. And for the user, you can install only the ones you want to use and ignore the rest.
Firebird allows you to add the extensions you want and ignore those you don’t want. There are about 113 extensions now. One lets you use mouse gestures to go forward or back a page, go to your home page, reload a page, page through your tabs, among a number of other actions.
And I literally just started using 0.6.1 today and just finished dragging my links to the whatever they call it in this browser. The tabbed browsing seems worth it alone. I added the google toolbar - is there a way to FB show show the number of popups blocked because in the two days I had it activated I took a ridiculous pride in watching the numbers go up on the google toolbar for IE.
When I replied to this post just now, the reply box came up half the width that it did in IE even though I have the size of the overall browser the same. Why is that? Also are the mouse gestures gimicky or do they really become effective? They remind me of the game Black and White.