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Comment by ihuman | Hacker News Reader

Too bad they've now been replaced popups that occur in the same window as the website you're viewing. Is there a name for this new type of popup?

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The real scourge at the time was actually pop-unders, which you would never figure out where they came from and saw them potentially hours after visiting the site that produced them.

It's honestly an improvement that sites have to obscure their own content (and thus spite their nose to save their face) and nothing else in order to give you intrusive ads. You'll always know what websites don't put value on their own content that way.

What do you mean was? popunders are all the rage recently and work great under Chrome.

[Reverse Engineering new PopUnder for Chrome 63 on Windows] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcFQeimLH1c

https://www.reddit.com/r/LiveOverflow/comments/84ertx/new_po...

Heck, popups still work in Chrome if they clickjack. There's no way to entirely disable popups on a site.

The browser could just not make any new window as a result of a click in the content area.

Browsers implement the HTML spec, which allows for this behavior.

Browsers have been known to implement the spec only partially.

They’re not required to.

Chrome provides many content settings that tend to toggle between "disabled, ask, allow". It should be possible to provide an option for spawning windows even when originating from a user event (although there isn't one currently).

Are you saying to have a permission that would ‘disallow, ask, or allow’ me opening new tabs? Because that’s exactly what it sounds like to me.

Indeed. Have you seen my site https://theannoyingsite.com/ ?

Your https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcFQeimLH1c is a 4.5-hour video, the first 5 minutes of which shows a completely static video track with an audio track of a guy talking slowly.

welcome to reverse engineering

Eh, it's kind of different when they're literally exploiting something in new versions of browsers that are actively updated and are going to get fixed.

Back then it was just supported behaviour and the dominant browser went several years without a major update. Like night and day.

The funny thing with these under a tiling window manager, is they turn into pop-sideways-es :D (unless you are in a stacking mode), makes it a bit easier to kill them immediately and also makes it more obvious where they came from. Haven't come across these in a while now though.

i3wm?

yes :)

We're working on blocking those too. Feel free to install this addon to help submit data on these:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/in-page-pop-u...

This would be an amazing feature! Good luck in your efforts.

That sounds great, but it seems like a Hard Problem, given that lots of sites/apps use modals for necessary things like logins and shopping carts. I suppose one approach would be to inject some kind of 'close and stay closed' control into any elements that cover the page (nice for paywall gray screens, too...)

I use 'nuke anything' for the gray screens. Click the stuff you never want to see again and it's gone forever.

I'm not sure it's all that hard. It's never been a great idea to make core user flows reliant on modals (by all means use them, but make sure you either practice progressive enhancement or have a fallback). Sites doing so are at risk of failing their users. That said, I'd love for a solution akin to popup blocking: block the popunder but alert the user that it happened and allow them to show certain ones.

Let me turn off Javascript more easily. And back on again easily. I usually need it gone for like 5 seconds, and then I need it back on, each of which is one key and one click in Safari and an entire journey to the moon and back in Firefox.

It would be cool if I could enable js on a per site basis

You can with NoScript.

Unlock Origin in advanced mode can do it, so can Noscript.

One word: uMatrix. NoScript lacks control on per-site basis, but is still ok.

IIRC, Noscript had per-domain JS controls before Umatrix existed.

But lacked fine grained control, at least the last time I used it. With uMatrix I can tell the browser to disable something (cookies/script/frames/media etc.) here but keep it enabled else/everywhere and the other way around. It gives the finest possible control but of course requires some time to whitelist the good stuff on new pages. A minor annoyance compared to the control it offers.

I wish it allowed for even finer control, though. What if it could prevent one specific function from running? Or replace tracking functions with no-op ones? Or hook into HTTP APIs in order to let you audit, modify or interrupt communications?

I guess you could use GreaseMonkey for that, though I can't imagine how you could keep track of everything. Might be useful for smallish modifications though.

Yeah, noscript is pretty powerful.

The biggest difference between the two, in my experience, is UX. uMatrix is the best UX for a content blocker I've ever seen - very intuitive and simple.

NoScript add-on is fantastic.

> enable js on a per site basis

uBlock Origin, check I'm advanced, block whatever you want per site, click save button

There are plugins for almost anything in Firefox. Did you try any of them for this purpose, like this one for example :

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javas...

the problem with using a plugin for something like this is that as soon as the plugin becomes popular enough, a third party purchases it from the original developer and adds a bunch of telemetry. stylish is a recent high-profile example, but it happens to small, benign-looking extensions even more often.

the problem has gotten so bad that i no longer use the plugin "store". i only install plugins that are open source, and only by building the source myself... meaning i miss out on automatic updates (but at least i know my plugin isn't spyware!).

it sucks.

It is also difficult to see which extensions have been granted what permissions. Right now I’m sticking with known extensions but maybe I should be compiling my own

There used to be plugins for almost anything. Then most of the powerful ones were kneecapped because of some bad actors. The new system is a joke.

I don't know, I kind of like it. I was writing a simple webextension within hours. Good tutorials etc.

New api functions are coming all the time as well. Its not yet as powerful as the old system but is there any reason to believe it will never be?

Literally yes, it will never be that powerful, and that's intentional. The old way was so powerful, able to do anything, because well, it basically just ran your addon in the core browser's execution context. Way too scary to give add-ons that much power.

However I genuinely do want stuff that isn't yet implemented. For example I want add-ons to get access to Firefox's copy of the Public Suffix List, which is what you usually wanted when your add-on actually just treats TLDs as special. I just this evening sent a PR to PassFF, a popular password manager to do something crude as a stop gap while we wait to access the PSL via Web Extensions.

Enable the developer menu in Safari and assign a keyboard shortcut to the JS item. Done :-)

The Develop menu in Safari helps enable keyboard shortcuts that can be used in Firefox? Please say more.

Vouching for uMatrix here it's super useful

> each of which is one key and one click in Safari

Safari user here. Which key and which click is that?

Key combo Cmd-,

(That’s command comma. Which I described as one key, cheating slightly, but hey they are so close to each other.)

Preferences panel comes up.

If you leave it on the security tab, the checkbox comes up. Uncheck it and now the site is usable without JS.

Another click on background or Esc to dismiss the dialog if you want to, but for some things that’s not even needed (therefore I claimed that low click count... ymmv).

Modals or modal windows.

Case in point: https://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/99ljrr/research...

Thank you for this! The comments are amazing!

I use "popover" because modals can serve a real purpose (logins etc.).

A minor aside- "Popover" doesn't quite work if you're regularly using Bootstrap because that means a specific thing.

https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.1/components/popovers/

Gnome has a similar widget, also called a “popover”; most menus use them.

Logins are not a real purpose for modals. Just go to the login page, and redirect back to where you were. I'll give you confirmation yes/no modals, but that's about it.

Nothing makes me want to sign up for your newsletter less than having it interrupt what I'm reading.

I particularly hate every idiot who decided that scrolling up meant I was done and wanted your garbage top bar to obscure half the screen (including, no doubt, the stuff I was trying to read).

Pffft, what are the odds that scrolling up will leave the text you were trying to read at the top of the screen?

I WILL CUT YOU

In all seriousness, it's partly that I have dumb habits. I highlight text as I read it (and that causes all sorts of idiot pop ups to share the quote on social media etc) and micro scroll up and down even when not actually trying to actively change the field of view.

I can't even justify why I do it. But I do. It's just how I read longform text on computers. On the plus side "reader view" can be a lifesaver

You're (and me) are not alone at this habit. Nice to know I'm not alone :-)

I do it all the time too. Hate when something happens. I've seen sites that also start loading next article if I click on the right side of the text column...

Good to know I'm not the only one with spastic Web browsing habits.

I WILL JUSTIFY IT...

I use the top of the browser's viewport as a transient "bookmark." That is, I read for awhile and then scroll until what I have read scrolls out of view. Now the line of text at the top of the viewport is the first line of what I have left to read.

Scrolling in most browsers is quantized to a value much greater than the line height of the text I'm reading. This means I must occasionally scroll past the part I've read and then retreat to reveal half a line or so of what I already read.

Unfortunately, all the algos that trigger new shit on a change of scroll direction disrupt my own manual adjustment algorithm. Even on a news site, a directional change in scrolling triggers some douchebag horizontal menubar that animates itself into view and obscures the next line of text I want to read. I have to scroll back down to make the douchebag menu disappear. When it disappears it reveals... a line of text which I already read!

So now my bookmarking technique is ruined because the disappearing douchebag menu is guaranteed to reveal at least a line and a half of text I already read.

I don't like this behavior because it disrupts my completely rational and reasonable behavior as a user of the browser. I am the one in charge, and if a web page tries to challenge me on that I swear to god I will copy the damn text and paste it into a contentEditable about:blank.

Then they can only sit there and dream about all the places I'm scrolling.

> I can't even justify why I do it.

You're helping your eyes stay on point when reading, just like some people reading a physical book/printout will use their finger or a pen for that purpose. It's perfectly normal. Your habits are not dumb. What those sites are doing with floating headers and bullshit on-select popups that's dumb.

Pretty good because I'm in the habit of scrolling down approximately a windowful (using the Page Down key) then when that scrolls a little too far (because I have low vision and consequently have the text size set unusually large, which many web sites don't handle correctly) using the up arrow key to find my place again.

It’s also distracting even if doesn’t obscure what I am looking at. Sudden unexpected movement in my peripheral vision! It’s one of the worst web design trends. The iOS Safari bar is done right, at least.

This is something I habitually add to my browser bookmark toolbar: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/

The thing is, they keep doing it cause it works. Go figure...

Do you have any citations for that? I see people either signing up because they don't realize they have a choice because the button to say "No" is intentionally smaller and obscured, but then they mark the newsletters as spam, or simply throw them out. I also see lots of people adding fake addresses like "screw@you.com" just to get past them. Has anyone verified that they actually do some real amount of good for the business putting them up beyond the simple metric of "we got tons of signups for our newsletter after doing it!"?

Where I work, the marketing department is always putting horrible newsletter popups on the web page, etc. I used to say, "That's going to detract from people signing up, not encourage it!". But they've got the data and they've shown it to me. As you say, it works.

I wondered why for a while, because as soon as I see those shenanigans, I'm gone. But then I realised: I'm not the target market for the websites we have at work (a full service travel tour company). Most of our clients are booking travel for a group of 30 people from their company 6 months or a year in advance. They are coming to our website because they want the damn newsletter. Took me a long time to understand that.

You can reduce the problem by turning off CSS animation and blocking elements with Stylus[1][2]. Also turn off all CSS and JS by default and enable resources on a site-by-site basis with umatrix[3][4]. If a page isn't readable, you can turn on Firefox reader mode to format it with one click. The system works well for me.

I put this in my global Stylus rules:

    /* Remove CSS animation on all websites */
    *, *:before, *:after {
        transition-property: none !important;
        transform: none !important;
        animation: none !important;
    }

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/

[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe...

[3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/umatrix/

[4] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/umatrix/ogfcmafjal...

> Also turn off all CSS and JS by default

Arguably, that creates a more user-hostile internet browsing experience compared to just allowing for those in-page modal pop ups. At least with those they're few and far between and you can just close the tab and forget about the site.

I don't think "hostile" is the correct word, since it improves my browsing experience. It does more than stop modals -- it prevents 90% of the design, advertising, and tracking garbage on the Web, and I can now read websites the way I want.

How do you turn CSS off with uMatrix? Is it doable separate from scripts?

https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/wiki/The-popup-panel <- CSS is a column

The adtech terms are:

Popups/Overlays = cover your current website.

Pop-unders = open new tab with your current site, while redirecting the old tab to an ad, thereby surprising you when you close your current site.

Bounce/Exit intent = the above formats but triggered when you leave the site or close the tab.

Interstitials = the above formats but triggered when you navigate between pages, common in image galleries.

If one browses with NoScript in default-deny mode, then many of those "popups over the content in the window" simply do not occur.

As well, when they do occur, going into Dev-Tools and deleting the <div> (or whichever element it happens to be) that is the actual popup is often sufficient to remove the popup and make the content view-able again.

I just leave. To each their own though.

The ones that track your mouse and sense you're about to close the tab and then show you the pop-up are the most sleazy

Ublock origin has a little icon that looks like an eyedropper. You can use it to pick an element you don't want to see anymore on a website. It works on mobile too.

Also reachable using the mouse: right click on the page, select from the menu the "Block element" option near the Ublock Origin icon, then pick the element to block and "Create" the rule in the lower right window that opens as soon as one picks the element. It also supports wildcards, useful to block similar elements or elements used in numbered pages, so that one * will nuke all of them.

Interstitial ads?

You shouldn’t be voted down. This is the ad industry term.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstitial_webpage

Now we have interstials behave like SPAs, so siblings are calling this modal, but that’s more about a dialog box you can’t click outside of until dismissed.

Interstitial is the entire content until you get past it, like Forbes when you have a content blocker on.

The word is "modal." Modal view, modal window, modal pop-up. Sometimes implemented by iframes, sometimes just with divs.

> Is there a name for this new type of popup?

I've heard that these are called pop-ins.

1. https://www.webfx.com/blog/marketing/non-intrusive-pop-ups/

2. https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/stop-pop-ups-chrome#comme...

Overlay?

They are bad, but because they are in the same window usually there's not as many of them as it was with popups.

I don't think so. Maybe "modal ad"?

I call them pop-ins.

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