Stopping Annoying Web Sites in Their Tracks

The Internet is a great resource, but the truth is that some Web sites are just plain annoying. Perhaps they scroll text in the Firefox Status Bar when you're trying to read the page or disable the right-click menu so you can't save an image. Whatever the case, Firefox gives you complete control over your Web experience by letting you prevent these and other annoying habits:

2. Select the Content icon at the top of the Options window.

3. Next to the Enable JavaScript check box, click Advanced.

   JavaScript is a general-purpose technology that some sites abuse to achieve these annoying effects.

4. In the window that appears, you can determine what a Web site can and cannot do:

   • Move or resize existing windows: This setting controls whether a Web site can move or resize your current Firefox window. By default, Firefox allows Web sites to do this.

   • Raise or lower windows: This setting controls whether a Web site can focus and defocus Firefox windows. For example, if you loaded Web sites simultaneously in two separate windows, one of the Web sites could steal focus, and that window would be brought to your attention. Firefox allows Web sites to do this by default.

   • Disable or replace context menus: This setting controls whether a Web site is able to disable the menu that appears when you right-click or replace it with something else. By default, Web sites are allowed to do this in Firefox. Some Web site owners use this to stop you from accessing the Save Image As command so you can't take their images. This is an illegitimate use, because there are many other commands on the contextual menu that the Web site is also preventing you from accessing, and because there's nothing unethical or illegal about saving an image for personal use. Other owners, however, use it for legitimate reasons. For example, if you were playing a game of Minesweeper online, you wouldn't want the contextual menu to appear each time you right-click.

   • Hide the Status Bar: This setting controls whether a Web site can hide the Status Bar in any windows it opens. Malicious Web site authors might try to hide the Status Bar to obscure the crucial information it offers about a page's location and security status. Thus, by default, Web sites aren't allowed to hide the Status Bar.

   • Change Status Bar text: This setting controls whether a Web site can change the text that appears in the Status Bar. By default, Firefox prevents Web sites from doing this. Firefox uses the Status Bar to display progress while a page loads, and to display a link's destination when you move the mouse over it. Some Web sites change the Status Bar text for legitimate reasons, such as to provide helpful information. Others do so to display distracting welcome messages or marquees or to obscure the true destinations of malicious links so they appear to lead somewhere benign.

5. Click OK to close the Advanced JavaScript Settings window.

6. Click OK to save your changes and close the Options window.