Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Some impressive statistics [updated] · 2006-08-07 20:33 by Wladimir Palant
I looked at the site statistics for the first time since adblockplus.org went live. The traffic in July exceeded my expectations by far and makes me already worry about the traffic limit. We got 2 million page requests which translates into 130 thousands visitors — more than 4 thousands every day.
Could Adblock be built into the browser? · 2006-08-07 16:10 by Wladimir Palant
Daniel Goldman from Opera Watch wrote Why Opera wouldn’t include an AdBlock feature in the browser claiming that no browser vendor would ever include ad blocking functionality in their core browser. This claim looks a little strange given that Opera already added ad blocking functionality with the release of Opera 9. Also, ad blocking has been a built-in feature of Mozilla Suite and Firefox virtually forever even though it isn’t as powerful as Adblock (images can be blocked by domain).
"Don't mail us unless you are in the US" · 2006-08-06 21:23 by Wladimir Palant
I am back from my vacation and working through all the mail I got in the two weeks. Amongst others I found a funny email bounce for the forum’s confirmation message: “We are not aware of anyone in Germany needing to email us”.
Leaving for vacation · 2006-07-18 18:50 by Wladimir Palant
I am leaving for a vacation tomorrow, going to Lvov (Ukraine) with my girlfriend. So if I’m not answering mails — don’t be surprised. You shouldn’t expect an answer from me before the 7th of August, I’ll probably not be online during the whole vacation.
Adblock Plus 0.7.1.1 released · 2006-07-17 23:58 by Wladimir Palant
This is a bugfix release, mainly fixing the Turkish locale and an 100% CPU usage issue.
Adblock Plus 0.7.1 released · 2006-07-01 10:30 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- New Preferences dialog layout makes adding new filters easier
- Filter changes can be applied without closing Preferences dialog
- Toolbar icon’s tooltip gives a quick overview about activity on the current page (number of blocked items, total number of items, most applied filters)
- Toolbar icon indicates a whitelisted page
- Exported filter lists contain the minimal required Adblock Plus version
- Subscription download respects HTTP headers like “Last-Modified” and “Expires”
Development builds removed · 2006-07-01 02:45 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus 0.7.1 is in AMO’s review queue, they will hopefully approve it soon. I removed the development builds, there isn’t much point in testing now.
Adblock Plus 0.7.1 almost ready · 2006-06-30 23:28 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Preferences dialog: applying filter changes doesn’t slow down the browser’s user interface any more
- Fixed: object tabs are not hidden properly when blocking objects (regression in Adblock Plus 0.7.0.2)
- Subscription download now sends “If-Modified-Since” headers (user can override by holding Shift when clicking “Update subscription”)
- Respecting “Expires” header received from subscription now, subscriptions will only be downloaded again after the expiration date (but no longer than two weeks after previous download)
Known issues
“Collapse blocked elements” doesn’t work for frames (*not* iframes), throws a JavaScript error- Turkish translation contains some English strings
Most localizations available · 2006-06-27 18:54 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Preferences dialog: Using browser’s browser.downloads.lastDir preference to determine default directory for import/export of filter lists
- Fixed: Changing tabs with list of blockable items open changes page scrolling
- Fixed: Subscription download sometimes fails without an obvious reason
Known issues
If several filters only differ in the options, all filters but one are ignored
Ethics of blocking ads · 2006-06-27 04:55 by Wladimir Palant
I found one of the better blog posts on the topic of ethical implications of ad blocking today. Being on the pro-adblock side of the discussion, it doesn’t fall for the usual “I don’t care how they earn their money” kind of argument.