Tendo City

There are a few "features" of HTML that honestly need to be disabled in modern browsers. Here's a few.

Pop-ups: No seriously, who wants these? Nobody, that's who. I can't see any advantage at all to pop-up code still existing. There IS an advantage to popping up a separate TAB, but not a full window. The ability to start up a whole new browser instance should ONLY exist for the user, not the web page.

Pop-unders, menu bar "disabling", pretty much any code that controls how a pop-up window forms: If HTML standard makers just can't bear to part with pop-up code, at LEAST prevent them from being able to dictate the terms of how that new browser instance starts.

Built-in browser "alert" boxes: This one is a bit confusing. This isn't actually rendered on the standard tab, but is a request to the browser itself to put up a box with a message with buttons that MUST be pressed, can't be dismissed, and you can't even close the browser unless the user clicks something. These are used primarily to force users to "accept" stuff or keep a constant train of pop-ups from being shut down. Process closing from ctrl-alt-del is pretty much the only way to deal with these.

On-close code of absolutely any kind: This is HTML code that frankly should never have been allowed to exist. Browsers shouldn't even HAVE hooks that let HTML access this functionality. This is when you close a window and the page is coded to do stuff, like open up two more windows. Again, total process closure is about the only way to deal with this.

I mean seriously, the ability for HTML to do this to a browser should NOT exist in a modern browser! There is no advantage except to malware makers! I can promise the net in general would be far safer without these, and no one anywhere would miss them.

Don't most browsers have pop-up and pop-under blockers included in the browser, though? It's been a long time since I've seen any of either one... though I imagine that I use Adblock+Noscript might help even more, even before I used those popups were mostly gone thanks to browsers, or at least Firefox and Seamonkey since they're what I use, letting you block them. I guess you're saying that HTML itself should block these things, but if browsers do, I'm not sure if it matters as much...

On the other hand, one thing that is a big problem are virus-infected web ads. I started using adblock+noscript several years back not to block advertising, but because my computer had gotten infected several times with virus infected ads, the kind that infect your computer just by viewing them, clicking is not necessary. Haven't had a problem since I started using them, so it's working, but obviously whatever is letting those through, either HTML or Flash, shouldn't let a banner ad you didn't even click on infect your computer with a load of viruses.

Adblock is basically malware now (my wife found out it was forcing ads in her browser), and nobody even knows who owns it (it was sold to an undisclosed buyer). I strongly recommend getting rid of it and replacing it with uBlock. I've had it for months, and it works a lot better than Adblock ever did anyway.

Unfortunately "pop up blocking" functionality in browsers is not 100% effective. Some code manages to "trick" browsers into doing it anyway. The better solution would be to completely remove that API from the browser code so as to render pop-ups impossible.

I actually have Adblock Plus, which I think is different from regular adblock? Anyway, you can disable that 'approved ads' thing in either version, I'm pretty sure. It's on by default but in the options you should be able to disable it.

As for popups/pop-unders, I see... well, there's always Noscript, that should get rid of those. But sure, something that works on all browsers would be good.

I'm not talking about addons. What I'm saying is I don't want a solution JUST for me, I want a solution for my grandparents, for EVERYONE'S grandparents. For that, the makers of HTML need to come together and say "these API functions are henceforth deprecated and it is expected that all browser makers that wish to comply with the new version of HTML will henceforth disable these functions". This is what will go a LONG way towards killing a LOT of malware entry points.