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Firefox To Hide Notification Popups By Default Starting Next Year (zdnet.com) 48

Posted by EditorDavid from the just-saying-no dept.
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: In a move to fight spam and improve the health of the web, Firefox will hide those annoying notification popups by default starting next year, with the release of Firefox 72, in January 2020, ZDNet has learned from a Mozilla engineer.

The move comes after Mozilla ran an experiment back in April this year to see how users interacted with notifications, and also looked at different ways of blocking notifications from being too intrusive. Usage stats showed that the vast majority (97%) of Firefox users dismissed notifications, or chose to block a website from showing notifications at all...

As a result, Mozilla engineers have decided to hide the notification popup that drops down from Firefox's URL bar, starting with Firefox 72. If a website shows a notification, the popup will be hidden by default, and an icon added to the URL bar instead. Firefox will then animate the icon using a wiggle effect to let the user know there's a notification subscription popup available, but the popup won't be displayed until the user clicks the icon.
Mozilla is the first browser vendor to block notification popups by default, according to the article. It's already available in Firefox Nightly versions, but will be added to the stable branch in January.

"I think Mozilla's decision is good for the health of the web," Jérôme Segura, malware analyst at Malwarebytes tells ZDNet.
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Firefox To Hide Notification Popups By Default Starting Next Year More

Firefox To Hide Notification Popups By Default Starting Next Year

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  • News? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @02:38PM (#59375862)
    Why is it news to mozilla developers that users hate everything that pops up, pops under, slides out, and so on?

    Answer: Its not, and never was.

    • I think this is news in that Mozilla are *finally* doing something other than follow Chrome's lead on everything.

      • Speaking of Chrome (or at least its parent) - one of the really annoying notifications I would be happy to see die is the one from Google that, after I am trying to navigate away from my work Gmail inbox, asks me "are you sure you want to leave Gmail?"

        Yes, Google, I do occasionally like to close my Gmail so I can concentrate on some project. Thank you for understanding.

        • Thatâ(TM)s probably because you have undo-send turned on, and youâ(TM)re trying to leave the page while the undo timer is still ticking. Iâ(TM)ve never had it ask that just leaving the page normally

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by roca ( 43122 )

        Mozilla have done lots of good things Chrome hasn't done. Did you miss the announcement about Enhanced Tracking Protection being turned on by default, blocking tons of trackers? Or browser extensions supported on Android? Or all the devtools features Chrome doesn't have?

        • I, of course, meant things that ordinary users care about. Not nerds.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by roca ( 43122 )

            ETP massively improves performance for everyone. Also, improving privacy benefits people even if they don't care about it.

            40% of US users use an ad blocker extension on desktop, so browser extensions on mobile aren't just for nerds.

          • Oh. Unfortunately we can't read your mind to determine a) that you had some unmentioned qualification in mind and b) know where your personal delineation of "only for nerds" lies.

      • Hey, but don't worry, soon we'll have SMSes intercepted directly by your browser!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Chrome users can block these notifications with uBlock Origin or a dedicated plug-in. With uBlock just enable the "uBlock - Annoyances" filter. Fanboy's Annoyances also kills them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zumbs ( 1241138 )
      It should not be. One of the early advantages of Firefox over IE6 was the ability to disable popup windows. Opera had that as well IIRC, and ... well ... pretty much all browsers except IE.

    • Occasionally you want notifications from a site, but why does everything have to be an in-your-face popup? I want a button off to one side, "Accept Notifications."

  • And also I wish.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @02:42PM (#59375874)
    I wish they could get rid of three other things: 1) sign up for our newsletter popups 2) this website uses cookies bullshit (thanks EU) 3) those totally annoying video boxes that follow you around when you clearly don't watch the video or you would have clicked on it to begin with. Also (4 sort of) Why does YouTube think I still want to watch a video when I've clicked the back button? Grrrr!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      5) Block Toboola/Outbrain type clickbait images, or display white rectangles instead.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      6) Every stupid fly-in frame that shoves itself on top of the content that I want to read.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rizole ( 666389 )

      2) this website uses cookies bulshit

      This doesn't fix all those but might cut down on some of your clicks I don't care about cookies [i-dont-car...cookies.eu]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fintux ( 798480 )
        I'm also using the same extension. Sometimes when I use another browser I just realize how annoying the web was getting before finding that one! I also totally agree with the GP's other points. In fact, I hate anything that, without interaction, hides some content, pops up, animates anything or plays audio. Pretty much all of that is fine for me if it is a result of some interaction, though.

  • Um no. (Score:2)

    by Nkwe ( 604125 )
    We are talking about the pop ups that ask if it is okay for the website to send notifications right? These are the notifications that can be sent some random time in the future, even when you are not actively on the website? Um no. I don't want those, I don't know why anyone would. I don't want them so much that I don't even want to be asked about them. Sounds like Firefox is doing the right thing.

    • I think I turned those off in 2013 when they were introduced, so no need for anything else.

    • I refuse them from most sites but I have them enabled for some like the Whatsapp web version. This change is fine but those pop ups didn't bother me much since they only appeared the first time you visited a site.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fintux ( 798480 )
        I also only use them for WhatsApp and such, for everything else, I permanently disallow them. But I have to do that four times (two computers * two operating systems) for any site I use. I also quite likely won't be liking the wiggle animation; hopefully there will be a way to disable that one as well.

  • ALL popups (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 03, 2019 @03:09PM (#59375972)

    Now do this with ALL the pop-ups by default, including the security ones. Do I want to allow this web site to do something that might enable XSS attacks? No. NEVER. quit asking me.

    There is literally one web site I use regularly that has a pop-up UI that makes sense. I can white-list that, it's likely to be a very small list for most people.

    • I second you on that one: create a whitelist of MY useful apps, and treat everything alse a potentially useless shit, hence hide everything such as popup and other annoyances by default on any other url/domain ; forget any cookie on closure ; kill any cache data for them, etc etc That would make me happy.

      For some reason, this does not seem to exist... I have to combine several extensions to near this, but this stupid notification shit would remain unblocked so far !
      (okay, I should create my own extension, b

  • dom.webnotifications.enabled = false (Score:5, Informative)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @03:25PM (#59376026)

    Implementing notifications in the first place required either manifest ignorance or evil intent.

    What Mozilla should do is yank these misfeatures from their browser and apologize publically for ever having introduced them in the first place.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fintux ( 798480 )
      They are actually useful for a couple of sites (WhatsApp web, Telegram), but 99% of other uses are exactly what you said.

  • You can disable webnotifications now (Score:5, Informative)

    by RichardDeVries ( 961583 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @03:28PM (#59376042) Journal
    In Firefox, go to about:config, search for dom.webnotifications.enabled and set it to false.

    • Re: You can disable webnotifications now (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @03:34PM (#59376066)

      If when doing something you have to go to about:config, then it isn't a feature, it's a hack.

      • I'd say it's halfway between a feature and a hack. There's no GUI way to do this, yet the developers anticipated users wanting to get rid of notifications altogether. Either way, I'm happy I can disable them.

      • Re: You can disable webnotifications now (Score:5, Insightful)

        by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Sunday November 03, 2019 @11:06PM (#59377258)

        >"If when doing something you have to go to about:config, then it isn't a feature, it's a hack."

        I disagree. There are far too many settings to have a pretty GUI for every single one. about:config is convenient, searchable, relatively straight-forward, and [unless see below] persistent. It even writes out a plain-english-readable config file that is 100% portable.

        I *might* agree with you when they hide the setting by removing the token and you have to add one manually (and yet it is still honored). This has happened many times, and is usually indicative of it being ignored/invalid in some future release.

        I DO consider it hack if you have to:

        1) Put the setting back because they arrogantly decided to override it after an update. (Rare, but I have seen it happen).
        2) Recompile the program because the Mozilla developers are so hostile that they think users should not be "allowed" to change something, so the setting was removed or ignored. (Not quite so rare, unfortunately).
        3) Create some strange config file that has to be redone or copied back with every "upgrade." Either to the user settings directory OR to the installation directory.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Advanced settings via the program's own GUI != hack

        Editing a config file to add a line that didn't exist by default != hack (but slightly closer)

        Having to create the config file != hack

        Having to replace some library to get the require functionality is getting pretty close

        Recompiling part/all of the program from source with different libs/flags is getting a bit closer

        Modifying the source code to implement the functionality, and recompiling it... that would be a hack.

  • I would be much happier if they would just give an option to block autoplay videos.

    How hard is it to just not automatically play videos?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geek ( 5680 )

      They did that months ago

      • No they didn't. They did for audio, which is a good thing.

        You can go through about:config, and I tried but it doesn't work. It just screws everything up which is why it's not a GUI feature yet. It's more like a hack.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by roca ( 43122 )

      Quite hard, actually.

      One problem is that there are legitimate needs for autoplaying audio and video, e.g. games, so naive autoplay blocking breaks a lot of sites. Browser autoplay blocking implements complicated heuristics to try to distinguish these legitimate needs from unwanted autoplay. (People suggest, "oh, just ask me every time" but of course that creates an alert-spam problem like the one in the original post here.)

      Another problem is that if you block autoplaying video elements, some sites will go t

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zumbs ( 1241138 )

        Another problem is that if you block autoplaying video elements, some sites will go to ridiculous lengths to get autoplaying "video" in front of users. For example, sites have been known to implement their own video codecs in JS. Even if JS is disabled, sites have been known to render "slideshow" video using pure CSS to shuffle through a set of images. Those hacks are of course much worse for users, in bandwidth and power, than just letting the site autoplay a proper video. That is why browser autoplay blocking focuses on blocking videos that have audio.

        Wow. Just wow.

        I can just see the Dilbertesque project lead declaring that if the requirement spec says that the site must behave like x, then it must be rammed full speed down the users throats, even if users are explicitly trying not to get it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        You're looking at it wrong, it's not 'blocking' it's simply not starting a video. Works well enough in my Firefox derivative browser, autoplay turned off via about:config.

        • I'm using FF v70, it's available via GUI. Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Permissions -> Autoplay. You can configure it globally, or per site (via popup icon from URL bar).

    • It took me a long time to block nearly everything that moves on netflix.com using Adblock. It would be great if Firefox could do that for me. Netflix has by far the worst website I have ever seen.

  • ...is to have a way for users to actually request web notifications when wanted/needed. similar to how popups are made: popups are allowed when initiated by the user with a click.

    there are some sites that i use that i actually want the web notifications. hope they take this into consideration

  • Am I the only one that finds it ironic that the article itself prompts for a ZDnet notification?

  • Webnotifications are the spawn of the unholy, the absolute worst, and whoever came up with it is a horrible person and should feel horrible.

  • I never want notifications from my browser. Ever. I have never said yes to even one web site that prompted to send me notifications in the browser. It would be great to never get prompted again.

  • Since the last update, I have started getting runaway memory problems in Firefox. There is always one process of the 7 or 8 running firefox.exe threads in Windows Task manager that keeps growing, regularly over 1 GB of used RAM.

    If I kill the offending process, 100% of the time if I go to the tab with Facebook, I have a "Tab crashed" message.

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