One of the main reasons I use Mozilla based browsers is the pop-up blocking ability. Today I went to nba.com in Phoenix and the page refused to load, it was caught in some loop and the little this-page-is-trying-to-open-a-pop-up-window icon was going nuts. The page loads ok in Mozilla and Chimera with pop-up blocking enabled so it’s likely just a Phoenix bug, but it got me concerned that "smarter" pop-up/under ads were already here.

It would be very easy to write the pop-up script so that if the pop-up was closed the page wouldn’t render. I’m not even so sure I could get that upset (annoyed certainly) if a site did this – the ads pay for the content, if you don’t see the ads, you don’t see the content. Seems about right really. If they do go to something like this, I hope more sites will offer paid subscriptions that disable all advertisement on the site. I understand that providing content costs money and if I frequent a site for their content I don’t really mind paying for it, but pop-up/under ads BUG ME!

This is what I fear will happen soon.