Simon Willison’s Weblog

Nice. Yet another way to DDoS your browser using endless loops of notepad popups. But the good news is, we can look forward to having the problem with us until Longhorn arrives *cough*. :-) Everytime my friend complains about the latest spyware and such changing his browser settings and start page, I thank St. Murphy that I run Firebird.

Chris - 8th August 2003 14:01 - #

Yeah really annoying. The suggested fixes are just plain wrong though. IE should only accept those types of URLs when directly typed into the address bar or otherwise activated in a local security context (e.g. favelets).

Jim Dabell - 8th August 2003 14:06 - #

True enough, although there is no shortage of pop-up blockers for IE:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/collection/0,coll id,1064,00.asp

Not that I'm defending IE. I tried playing around with the CSS for the page with a re-sizable column of text that you posted yesterday. It occurred to me the left-hand column might be nice for an image. Works in Firebird; works in Opera. But it doesn't in IE - at least not if you want a border but don't want an intrusive stripe

test

I hate that kind of thing.

Michael - 8th August 2003 19:41 - #

Sure there are popup blockers, but do any of them defend against Notepad popups (which don't use javascript, just a dodgy call to a view-source protocol link)?

It's not just that IE is a relatively weak browser. Using an alternative brings the huge advantage that, since 95% of the web is surfing with IE, the muppets who spend all their time thinking up innovative new ways to irritate surfers rarely come up with techniques that work in alternative browsers. Switch away from IE and most of the really annoying stuff (auto-downloading dialers, ads that dance around your screen, notepad popups) just vanishes.

Simon Willison - 8th August 2003 20:23 - #

Don't know. I don't think I'll bother to download any of them to check. :-)

I wonder how many people using NT-based Windows machines, such as XP Home, have turned off Windows Messenger. Steve Gibson has a little application to do that - though it's easy enough to do anyway.

I see your point about "security through obscurity". I use Pegasus Mail partly for that reason. And my Mac needs few virus updates. It's often said that Microsoft products aren't as bad security-wise as people say: it's more that since their machines are everywhere those are the ones that make the tempting target. If Linux was as popular ... Maybe, either way, as you say, there's a lot to be said for using what most people aren't!

Michael - 8th August 2003 20:54 - #

The problem is not with the popup blockers. The problem is that, once again, the browser vendor went ahead and implemented a poorly thought out idea without publishing a public specification on the matter beforehand. A public specification gives at least two major advantages:

1. Peer review. People are quick to point out stupidity.
2. Independent support of the specifications. Why should popup blockers be expected to block things that have not been documented ahead of time, and don't follow normal rules (e.g. <img> is for inline images, not popups).

This is just going to be yet another special case that software vendors have to code around to protect their Internet Explorer users.

Jim Dabell - 8th August 2003 21:00 - #

Michael -this will fix yout layout problem in IE:

img {
vertical-align: text-bottom;
}


insin - 9th August 2003 09:42 - #

Everything coming from Microsoft has been annoying to use especially the IE. I am glad I switched 100% to Apple and using Safari. No more hangs, pop-ups, viruses, and worm which is a constant pain when using MS Windows. Now I spent more quality time browsing than actually trying to close pop-up windows

Thomas Chai - 13th August 2003 07:40 - #

Help pop ups are killing me what the hell do I do to stop the damned things.

Andy Stobie - 7th April 2004 14:29 - #