K-Meleon

Documentation - Features - Control and Disable Popup Windows

Introduction

One of the most annoying things about browsing the Internet these days has been the proliferation of popup and popunder ads. Unwanted by many users, these ads appear automatically, wasting your time and bandwidth. In some cases, these windows can even create privacy and security concerns. Fortunately, K-Meleon provides you with a way to block the vast majority of these annoying ads.

Popup Control

K-Meleon's Popup Control allows you to disable popup and popunder windows that appear any time that a page loads or unloads in the browser. You can also set the restriction to a specific domain for a more limited set of controls. Many advertisers use these Javascript-generated windows to harass you entering and exiting a site and these controls will stop those windows from appearing. These settings do not affect user-generated windows launched by the user clicking on a link.

Disable all popups

To disable popup and popunder windows on any page loads or unloads:

1. Go to the Popup Control section under Edit - Preferences - Privacy.

2. Check the box labeled Disable popup windows on page load/unload.

3. Click on OK to save your change.

Disable all popups on a specific domain

To disable popup and popunder windows on page loads or unloads on a specific domain:

1. Go to the Popup Control section under Edit - Preferences - Privacy.

2. Check the box labeled Disable popup windows on domains beginning with:.

3. In the next box below, enter in the name(s) of the domain(s) that you want to block popup and popunder windows on. If you enter in multiple domain names, separate the domain names with commas. If you want to block popups by all sites within a single top level domain (TLD), like all .com sites, enter in that TLD without any periods or wildcard characters.

4. Click on OK to save your change.

Now browse to your favorite ad-popping web site and test your changes. You should discover that you see a lot less of these windows after you make the change.

Resources

Mozilla's Configurable Security Policies provides a great deal of information on controlling windows to an even finer degree.

Customizing Preferences explains how to implement the additional preferences outlined at the Mozilla site.

Last updated: September 13, 2002
Created: October 6, 2001