Adblock Plus and (a little) more
German court (again) says ad blocking legal; Axel Springer given consolation prize on appeal · 2016-06-24 12:18 by Ben Williams
Axel Springer, the multi-billion transnational publisher who puts out Business Insider and Germany’s Bild, among others, appealed our previous victory against them in German court, and we’re happy to inform you that users got another win today at the German regional court of appeals. That is, ad blocking is still legal in ye olde Deutschland. They were granted a secondary part of the appeal, but the important part resulted in an outcome we know very well: users win!
Adblock Plus 1.12 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2016-06-01 15:03 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.12 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.12 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.12 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
This release features experimental Safari Content Blocking support. So if you’re on Safari 9, you can try out the new (faster) blocking mechanism now by enabling it in the options. But please read the announcement first; as that feature is still experimental and Content Blockers have some limitations, there are some caveats. However, Content Blockers will eventually completely replace the old mechanism we relied on so far on Safari.
There also have been some bug fixes and other improvements for all platforms which are listed below, and some changes under the hood which aren’t visible to the user.
Changes
- Improved performance of element hiding, reducing page load times (issue 235, issue 4038, issue 4036).
- Fixed a regression, introduced with the previous release, which caused the Adblock Warning Removal List to not be added anymore (issue 3772).
- Prevent websites from circumventing element hiding by removing or disabling the stylesheet (issue 3699).
- Prevent websites from showing previously blocked elements (issue 3840).
Chrome/Opera-only changes
- Added an option to hide the Adblock Plus developer tools panel (issue 3796).
- Prevent websites from tricking users into adding subscriptions by simulating clicks on abp:subscribe links (issue 3828).
- Worked around a Chrome bug that broke the feedback functionality on blogger.com (issue 2687).
- Administrators deploying Adblock Plus via group policy can now configure additional subscriptions (issue 3801).
- Starting with this release, there are unified builds for Chrome and Opera, using the exact same code on both browsers (issue 3760).
Safari-only changes
- Added experimental support for Safari Content Blocking (see above, issue 3687).
- Fixed: Wrong domain was whitelisted by icon menu after navigating through the history (issue 3924).
Experimental Safari Content Blocking support · 2016-05-18 14:54 by Dave Vandyke
With Safari 9 Apple announced support for Content Blocking Extensions, with the aim of providing a more efficient way for Safari extensions to block adverts. (At the same time they announced the depreciation of the old method Safari extensions use to block adverts, implying it is likely to be removed from future Safari versions.) Since then we have been working on adding experimental Content Blocking support to Adblock Plus (issue 3687). It will be available as of Adblock Plus 1.12 for Safari and is now in the developments builds as of 1.11.0.1602.
Content Blocking can be enabled from the options page for supported versions of Adblock Plus and Safari:
But wait! Before you give it a try, here are some things you should know:
- Safari disables the old method we use to block adverts when Content Blocking is enabled. This means that after disabling Content Blocking you will need to restart Safari.
- To support Content Blocking we translate Adblock Plus filters to Content Blocking rules. While we’re working to improve this it is still a fairly slow process, you may notice a small delay when enabling Content Blocking or when adjusting your filters and subscriptions. (Each change causes the Content Blocking rules to be regenerated.)
- Adblock Plus filters do not translate perfectly to Content Blocking rules, which means that some filters simply won’t work at all and some other filters may not work exactly as before.
- Safari 9 has a limit of 50,000 Content Blocking rules, causing an error to be shown when exceeded: “Extension compilation failed: Too many rules in JSON array.”. If you see this error try disabling some filter list subscriptions. We are working to further compress the Content Blocking rules generated and also hope that Apple will increase this limit in future versions of Safari.
Adblock Browser 1.3.2 for iOS released · 2016-05-12 09:02 by Mario König
Install Adblock Browser 1.3.2 for iOS
Changes
- Fixed a bug which caused multiple UI elements to be unresponsive after a version update (Issue 3811)
- Fixed a bug which caused Adblock Browser to render websites incorrectly under specific circumstances (Issue 3954)
- Fixed a bug which caused Adblock Browser to lose history data and bookmarks during a version update (Issue 3983)
Adblock Plus for Microsoft Edge available for Windows Insiders on a Fast Ring · 2016-05-11 11:27 by Sebastian Noack
We have been working closely with Microsoft to bring Adblock Plus to Microsoft Edge, their new web browser. Today, Microsoft pushed an update to the Windows Insider Fast Ring (their pre-release channel), improving support for browser extensions in Microsoft Edge. At the same time we have released an experimental version of Adblock Plus for Microsoft Edge that is compatible with this latest Windows Insider Fast Ring update. This is the first ad blocker available for Microsoft Edge.
100 million users, 100 million thank-yous · 2016-05-09 16:47 by Ben Williams
Y’all rule. For real … As our co-founder Till told TechCrunch Disrupt in Brooklyn today, our newest user estimates put us – err, “y’all” – at over 100 million users (“user” = active installation). Thanks to each one! While counts have been relatively stable in countries like Germany and France, we’ve seen tremendous growth elsewhere, like in the US and UK, as people there take back control of their online experience. Once again, thanks … here’s to the next 100 million!
Diagnostics 1.3.2 for Adblock Plus released · 2016-05-03 15:39 by Wladimir Palant
Install Diagnostics 1.3.2 for Adblock Plus
This is a minor update, resolving an issue that might potentially have side-effects during browser startup (issue 2850).
Customizations 1.0.5 for Adblock Plus released · 2016-05-03 15:37 by Wladimir Palant
Install Customizations 1.0.5 for Adblock Plus
This is a minor update, resolving an issue that might potentially have side-effects during browser startup (issue 2850).
Element Hiding Helper 1.3.8 for Adblock Plus released · 2016-05-03 15:34 by Wladimir Palant
Install Element Hiding Helper 1.3.8 for Adblock Plus
This is a minor update, resolving an issue that might potentially have side-effects during browser startup (issue 2850). This also fixes warnings in Browser Console that Element Hiding Helper was producing in newer Firefox versions (issue 3962).
Flattr Plus · 2016-05-03 15:32 by Ben Williams
The web’s been searching for 27 years to find a viable way to let users painlessly fund the content they love. We think we’ve found what we’ve all been looking for: Flattr Plus, a joint product between Flattr and ABP, will allow you to easily and automatically fund the artists, bloggers and musicians you love. Beta sign-up now at the new Flattr Plus website.