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I was opening up a bunch of links in different tabs when one of them had a JavaScript pop-up dialog.

It was trying to force me to download something and no matter how many times I clicked "Cancel" the message dialog would pop-up again.

And there was no way to just close that tab and I was in the end forced to hard-close Firefox.

So I'm wondering if there's a setting (aside from disabling all JavaScript) or perhaps an add-on that could have allowed me to close it?

Ideally each tab should be independent but I guess Firefox doesn't work like that. And on that note, are there any browsers that do work like that?

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Google Chrome, I think, runs each tab in a different process. Left as a comment cause it doesn't really answer your question. – Grundlefleck Oct 8 '09 at 17:52
technically that answers one of his questions... – quack quixote Oct 8 '09 at 20:06
IE8 can close only the problem tab, not sure if that'll help in this situation. Also, I would suggest not using again any site that does this unless essential. – outsideblasts Oct 8 '09 at 20:11
Thanks! I'll check Chrome out in more detail. And yeah, I didn't intend to visit that site, I was searching for something and just opening up a bunch of links. – JJ Oct 8 '09 at 21:10
Chrome will also warn you of an erroneous popup and ask if you wan't to stop it's execution. – John T Oct 24 '09 at 3:06
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5 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

I use the "Always ask me where to save files" option as a weak safeguard against this sort of thing, since it pops up a download dialog that I can always cancel, even if I click "Yes" to the Web site's dialog.

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up vote 0 down vote

Get the source of the popup and block it with either Ad-Block or NoScript.

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I was hoping to find a more universal solution. I know NoScript would work in this case, but it's still inconvenient to whitelist (or even temporary whitelist) each site. – JJ Oct 8 '09 at 21:12
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up vote 0 down vote

Just temporarily disable javascript in your Firefox Options. (Tools -> Options -> Content)

Close the tab, and then re-enable Javascript. Problem solved. (Although it would be great to simply have a "force close" type option...)

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up vote 0 down vote

I think the best plugin for quickly enabling/disabling JavaScript in FireFox would be the WebDeveloper Plugin: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/

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up vote 0 down vote

What version of FF?

 in firefox 4, javascript alerts/prompts.... no longer block the entire
 application (finally), only the tab, so you can close the tab without
 dismissing the prompt

http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6473

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protected by studiohack♦ May 19 '11 at 21:19

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