Adblock Plus and (a little) more
And we proudly present: The Deregifier! · 2006-08-23 00:26 by Wladimir Palant
After years of regexp mania we now have to go back to simple filters — starting with Adblock Plus 0.7 those are more efficient than regular expressions. This doesn’t mean that regular expressions got any slower, it’s that simple filters got very fast. There are also other advantages a dozen simple filters have over one long regexp. They are simply easier to read, “effective filter” in the blockable items tooltips presents more relevant information (one rule instead of the whole regexp), we get hit counts for every filter that is also more relevant, and we can deativate every simple filter separately if it causes problems.
Investigating filter matching algorithms · 2006-08-22 20:02 by Wladimir Palant
Warning: dense computer science talk ahead. Proceed at your own risk!
This is the story behind improving the performance of Adblock’s most important component — filter matching. The problem is the following: we have a set F consisting of f filters, we have a string (an address) S of length n, and we need to know whether this string matches any of the filters. If it does, we need to block the element associated with this address. And we should decide really soon because there are a few hundred more of those addresses to be tested and the user is waiting impatiently.
Speaking of respecting users... · 2006-08-20 23:36 by Wladimir Palant
When you go to Adblock’s (not Adblock Plus) web site — what strikes you most? Is it MozDev’s cool design? Or is it the great description of things you can do with Adblock? I bet that’s not what you notice. I am almost sure that you stare at the text and swear: “Who the hell put grey text on white background? How are we supposed to read this?”
New web tools for Adblock Plus · 2006-08-20 01:27 by Wladimir Palant
I opened a new web site section called Web tools where I put the three web-based tools for Adblock Plus users I wrote recently.
Adblock Plus 0.7.1.2 released · 2006-08-18 03:14 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- Translations added: Czech, Norwegian (Bokmål), Greek, Ukrainian
- The new
abp:protocol scheme allows adding a subscription with two clicks - Preferences dialog: Improved inline editor’s compatibility with various themes
- Fixed: Installation in SeaMonkey on Linux sets wrong file permissions
Two new translations added · 2006-08-17 22:31 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Translations added: Greek, Ukrainian
Known issues
abp: links not UTF-8 encoding are not accepted
Documentation for Yahoo Mail crashes · 2006-08-15 23:16 by Wladimir Palant
People still complain frequently that their browser crashes on Yahoo Mail so I thought sending them to a (not very clearly formulated) forum post wouldn’t be the best thing to do. I wrote some text describing the problem and how it can be solved.
Adding filter subscriptions with two clicks · 2006-08-15 14:28 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- The new
abp:protocol scheme allows subscribing with two clicks using links like the following: Subscribe to EasyList
Some polishing for the inline editor · 2006-08-15 01:01 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Translations added: Czech, Norwegian (Bokmål)
- No longer ignoring NewsFox’ content pane, elements of the displayed RSS feeds can be blocked now
- Preferences dialog: Improved inline editor’s compatibility with various themes
- Preferences dialog: Fixed an incompatibility with the Plastikfox theme, inline editor would resize the filter tree
- Preferences dialog: Fixed graphical glitch, list selection wouldn’t go away when inline editor is activated
- Subscription authors can now use a comment to specify when the subscription should be downloaded next time (should contain something like
expires after 5 daysorExpires: 48 hours)
Some SeaMonkey and Linux installation issues fixed · 2006-08-13 03:51 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Fixed: Installation in SeaMonkey on Linux sets wrong file permissions
- Installation in SeaMonkey on Linux now checks write permissions before trying to install
- Installing in Mozilla Suite not possible any more, displays an error message