Prevent websites from resizing Firefox’s browser window

Firefox is my browser of choice. Although we happen to have a rather large number of Opera followers at the TS forums, I have been left unconvinced and kept faithful to Firefox ever since version 1.5 came out. At that point the browser was more secure than ever, rock solid, very polished and popular enough that you had dozens of extensions to customize it to your liking. I haven’t looked back ever since.

Now, one of the most obvious tweaks you can apply to your Firefox installation is removing the annoyance of letting websites resize the browser window at their will. Despite of the more sophisticated pop-up blocker that comes in most recent versions of the browser, many websites still do away with popping those up and in many cases resizing either your main window or maximizing the pop-up window to get your full attention (just before you hit the X button).

You won’t even need an add-on to do this.

Go to Tools > Options
Click on the Content tab
Next to where it says “Enable Javascript”, click on Advanced
Uncheck the option “Move or resize existing windows”

You’re done! I will try to bring more of these basic, and other not so basic tips on a regular basis to the blog.

Also remember we have a complete Firefox tweak guide posted in the main site.

Written by Julio Franco

October 5th, 2007 at 10:24 am

Posted in software,tips & tricks

17 Comments so far

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Totally useful tip. There is nothing more annoying then you have hi-res, few windows arranged..and suddenly all is covered by huge browser window. Thanks!

mikeD

10 Apr 08 at 3:13 am
Thank you very much!

alydhiends

24 Jul 08 at 2:18 pm
Hey great tip. Gamespot doesn’t screw up my browser anymore!

Shawn

31 Jul 08 at 9:05 pm
I can’t believe you just solved this hugely, hugely annoying problem for me. Absolutely wonderful.

Gilbert

2 Aug 08 at 8:06 pm
Thanks for the tip, I should really spend more time looking through the menus for things like this. I hate when websites change my browser size without asking! Of course it would be stellar if site builders just wrote better code with fluid designs that scale nicely to any size.

digitaltodd

8 Aug 08 at 9:46 am
Thanks for the tip, just what I needed.

wade boggs

30 Aug 08 at 6:03 pm
Doesn’t work. Some websites (possibly runescape) still frequently mess with my window size.

Moho

28 Dec 08 at 12:58 pm
I love open threads! It lets me say that this answer was awesome. Here I was on tmobile’s site trying to figure out how to upload pictures from my phone to the internet and this tutorial decided to resize me.

Never again!

Wade from Chattanooga

29 Apr 09 at 10:45 am
July 11, 2009
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Thank you for this great tip. It’s funny how something as simple as having a webpage resize my browser be so annoying, but it really bugged me.
I’ll be looking forward to this page in future for similar tips and hints

Thanks again;
Al Michael

Allan Michael

11 Jul 09 at 4:04 pm
I’ve got Firefox 3.5 for Mac, and it works the same way, but the menu is found under Firefox->Preferences->Content, and then click on ‘Advanced’ near where it says JavaScript &c as above.

Tony Tambasco

7 Sep 09 at 10:41 am
Cheers for this, it was really bugging me, thanks!

Jonny Rapp

5 Nov 09 at 11:40 am
Thank you for this! Developers, write better code so that your applications scale nicely. Web apps have no business interrupting users’ workflow. I don’t think anyone out there really appreciates this.

Aleks

9 Dec 09 at 4:12 am
Thanks a lot for this. So simple, just a checkbox! If only I had know about this before! :)

G

10 Feb 10 at 4:11 am
Thanks a lot for this tip. It’s helped me no end.

Thierry Henry

14 Mar 10 at 4:40 pm
Thanks for the tip! I was checking out Hybrid’s site (the music group), and it resized my browser without asking. So I re-sized it back to the way I like, and then clicked on the “Created by ” link at the bottom, to send the designer a nasty email, and HIS website also resized my browser! Argh!

Artsy website designers SUCK

1 Apr 10 at 10:47 pm
Thank you for this fix to a very annoying problem.

Jeremy in Kansas

1 Aug 10 at 10:57 am
This tip helped me too. All of a sudden my browser opens maximized, which it never did previously, and the maximize button only minimizes to the Task Bar. The only way to display the window, I had to Right-Click and select maximize. Clicking on the Task Bar icon did nothing, but flash the screen. Anyway, I followed this tip, then closed the FF window, restarted FF, which was still maximized, clicked on the minimize/maximize button and what do you know, the screen returns to my preferred size! Thanks a Million!!!
GG12332

gg12332

12 Oct 10 at 11:50 pm