How to remove Yahoo's annoying “Bouncing Red Ball” on News Feed in Email (Firefox)
They added “News Feed for You” in Yahoo Email
When I open up my Yahoo email account, there have always been a bunch of icons in the top left: Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Notepad, and Messenger.
Recently, however, a new icon appeared – Two pages like an open newspaper, and on top was a little red bouncing ball with the number 1 in it. This was the “News Feed for You” icon, and clicking on it took you to a page with news stories that were specifically targeted for you. When Yahoo posted new stories, the ball would bounce up and down to let you know there was new content.
The ball bounced up and down, up and down, up and down.
All. The. Time.
I wanted to rip that thing off the page. It distracted me from reading my emails, which are important to me. The news stories are not at all important to me. Besides, when I want news, I can go to Yahoo's homepage – I don't need it in my email.
But the real problem was the bouncing red ball. A non-bouncing red ball would have been a million times better, but that wasn't an option. I just wanted to get rid of the whole thing.
Since it took me far more time than I wanted to spend to come up with a solution, here is how I managed to get it done. There may be other ways of doing it, but this worked for me.
How I got rid of that bouncing red ball in Yahoo Email
Anyway, I couldn't find anything in Yahoo or Google that provided me with a solution. Until I found Ad Block Plus, an extension to Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/ (I believe there are versions for other browsers too).
Download the add-on (it's got over 20 million users and seems to be approved by Mozilla).
In the upper right-hand corner of your screen, there will be a small red “stop sign” logo with ABP. Click on the down arrow for the drop-down menu.
Choose “Filter Preferences”
Pick “Custom Filter”
Click on “Add Filter Group” which should open a new empty box on the right.
Click on “Add Filter”
Paste in the following, without the quotation marks:
“ mail.yahoo.com###newsfeed-opener “
Click once somewhere else in the same window to save it.
Click “Close” and you're done.
Once you open your Yahoo email page, the bouncing red ball should be gone.
For more information
For additional information, check out this part of the Yahoo forums:
https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/210695
