Yes popups

The story

One day, when I was using Firefox 1.0.x, some undesired popup appear. That seemed really weird, since my settings were supposed to block the popups... a few months later I learned that there was a "vulnerability" that allowed plugins like Flash to open popups despite of the default popup filter. Then I learnt that some settings could be tweaked to block even these popups, for instance with the Popups Must Die! extension.
But with these settings, you can't have any popup at all, even when you need them (the "show this popup" function in Firefox doesn't work with these options enabled). So I decided to improve Popups Must Die! by making it active : you can enable and disable the anti-popups settings just by pressing a key (well, 3 keys indeed).

Short presentation

Yes popups is a Firefox extension that quickly toggles the most restrictive anti-popup options on and off : to toggle popups on/off, either click on the icon or press CTRL+SHIFT+Q.

Due to some comments I got, I think I have to make this clear : this extension, with the default settings, blocks all (well, indeed, not completely all unfortunately) popups, so don't write to me saying "omg, it blocks this popup I need so much on this website", it's not a bug, it's a feature. Adding the above-mentionned website to your whitelist will solve the problem in the case of js popups.
And, the new thing compared to Popups Must Die! is that you can enable and disable the anti-popups settings easily : if you know there is a popup you need, press CTRL+SHIFT+Q, click on the link, and press CTRL+SHIFT+Q again.

Download

Current version is 0.9.8. It requires Firefox 1.5 or newer.
You should use version 0.9.7.7 or greater.
You shouldn't install an older version without first uninstalling properly (use the uninstall option in the settings dialog) the current one.

Downloads :

• On PatheticCockroach.com : Version 0.9.7.8
• On addons.mozilla.org : version 0.9.7.8, 0.9.8 is pending approval
• On Filefront :
  • Version 0.9.7.7
  • Version 0.9.7.6
  • Version 0.9.7.5
  • Version 0.9.7.1
  • Version 0.9.7.0 (no locales !)
  • Version 0.9.7.0 (with non-complete locales !)
  • Version 0.9.6.2 (marked FF2-compatible)
  • Version 0.9.6.1
  • Version 0.9.4 (not localized)
  • Version 0.5 (first version)

You can follow our translation progress and also participate on BabelZilla.org.

Known issues

Bugs

(in version 0.9.7.*) Launch a countdown, open a popup and close the first window : the countdown is stopped...

Technical details

Yes popups currently acts on the following parameters :

dom.disable_open_during_load

This is Firefox "Block Popup Windows" option.
It can be true (filter popups) or false (all popups allowed). The default value is true. It needs to be true for Yes popups to work properly.

dom.popup_allowed_events

This is a list of events that are allowed to open a popup when the filter is enabled.
For instance submit is the event that occurs when you submit a form. So this is basically a good way to filter "good" from "bad" popups (usually, when you click on a link, you want it to open, even if it's in a popup). But some malicious sites catch these events (using javascript) and show advertising popups when you submit a form or click on a link.
To avoid these popups, Yes popups can set the dom.popup_allowed_events option to an empty string : no event can induce a popup !
The default value is change click dblclick mouseup reset submit.

privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins

At this time, Firefox doesn't know how to filter popups generated by plugins like Flash.
So, some malicious websites use plugins to open popups. To prevent this, we can block all popups from plugins by setting privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins to 2 or 3 (see in Yes popups to know the difference).
The default value was 0 (or maybe 1, I'm not sure) in Firefox 1.0.x, now it's 2 in Firefox 1.5.x.

Changelog

!======> Change log <======!
0.9.8 (2008-02-29) :
	- compatible with Firefox 3 beta 3 - unfortunately, addons.mozilla.org didn't let us mark
	it compatible with Firefox 3 final, so we'll have to release another update later...
	- added uk-UA, pt-PT and (unfinished) hr-HR locales

0.9.7.8 (2007-02-25) :
	- added ja-JP locale
	- updated ru-RU translation

0.9.7.7 (2007-01-02) :
	- fixed some compatibility issues (URL Link...) - thank you rpoccMeucmep for the bug report
	- updated ru-RU translation

0.9.7.6 (2006-11-18) :
	- added translations into af-ZA, ru-RU and pt-BR (pt-BR is unfinished)

0.9.7.5 (2006-09-30) :
	- added translations into nl-ND, de-DE, it-IT and es-ES

0.9.7.1 (2006-09-17) :
	- added translations into fr-FR and sk-SK
	- fixed a minor bug about yespopup_version

0.9.7.0 (2006-09-17) :
	- *REMOVED all locales*, they will be added again when they are finished
	- added : coutdown and popup count
	- known bug : launch a countdown, open a popup and close the first window : the
	countdown is stopped...

0.9.6.2 (2006-09-03) :
	- Marked compatible with Firefox 2.

0.9.6.1 (2006-08-15) :
	- First localized version. Added translations into : de-DE, es-ES, fr-FR, it-IT and nl-NL.
	No new functions otherwise.

0.9.4 (2006-07-21) :
	- Yes popups needs to count how many FF windows are opened, but sometimes this count
	gets messed up, impairing the proper functioning of Yes popups. We added an option
	to manually reset this windows count.

0.9.3 (2006-02-22) :
	- fixed a bug that occured when upgrading from version <=0.9 to 0.9.1 or 0.9.2

0.9.2 (not released) :
	- added "Block Popup Windows" option handling because setting it properly (enabled)
	is needed for the proper functioning of the extension

0.9.1 (2005-12-20) :
	- fixed a bug about the "When starting Firefox" option

0.9 (2005-12-19) :
	- added settings dialog + an uninstallation routine

0.5 (2005-12-10) :
	- initial release, simply toggles between Firefox default popups settings and
	Popups Must Die! settings

Credits

The following resources have been pretty useful to us :

• Privacy.popups.disable from plugins - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
• Dom.popup allowed events - MozillaZine Knowledge Base
• Popups Must Die!
• PopupTest
• XUL Tutorial - MDC
• Building an Extension - MDC
• Traduire une extension - Geckozone

Ok, this list is getting too big... here is our little links.txt file then...

http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/extensiondev/
http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/xuledit/xuledit.xul
http://www.xulplanet.com/references/elemref/

http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XUL_Tutorial
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XUL_Tutorial:Keyboard_Shortcuts
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Building_an_Extension

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/embedapiref/embedapi83.html
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Using_nsIXULAppInfo

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Dev_:_Using_preferences

http://www.brothercake.com/site/resources/scripts/onload/

http://extensions.geckozone.org/TraduireUneExtension

javascript :
http://www.brothercake.com/site/resources/scripts/onload/
http://web.singnet.com.sg/~xymedia/javascript/operator.html
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=318494
http://www.javascripter.net/faq/mathfunc.htm