hi whoscarl, nice to hear you're using opensource softw. Downloaded the latest version yet? when a pop-up appears, a small yellow tab with an options button should appear in the FF browser under the toolbar. options are "allow popups for this site, always allow..." works for me with the latest.

http://www.mozilla.com/

https://pfs.mozilla.org/plugins/?application=firefox for optimising, download the java applet maybe.