Adblock Plus and (a little) more
New filter options $generichide and $genericblock · 2015-11-17 12:18 by Dave Vandyke
We have added two new filter options, $generichide and $genericblock which are already available in development builds and will be included in Adblock Plus 2.6.12 for Firefox and 1.9.4 for Chrome, Opera & Safari. They allow exception rules to be written that disable generic hiding or blocking rules for a given website whilst leaving site-specific rules intact.
This is an experimental feature that is still subject to change.
Some websites detect Adblock Plus by testing whether a certain generic rule is in effect. For example, if a file called “ads.js” isn’t loaded they might guess that the client is blocking adverts. The new options have been added to give filter authors more power to combat this, they provide a simple way to disable all generic rules for any websites that are found to be using this technique.
Here is an example rule that will disable generic hiding rules for the website adblockplus.org: @@||adblockplus.org^$generichide.
What counts as a generic rule? Currently, we define a generic rule as one that either applies to all domains, or all domains with a few exceptions. As long as a filter contains at least one domain or sitekey to match we consider it to be specific.
(Note that by this definition the blocking rule ||example.com^ is generic whereas */ads/*$domain=example.com is site-specific.)
Support for other platforms such as Internet Explorer is still in progress.
#CampDavid NYC · 2015-11-12 12:43 by Ben Williams
Last Tuesday in New York we hosted #CampDavid NYC, a meeting of publishers, advertisers, journalists, nonprofits and tech groups to help us formulate our newly announced Acceptable Ads ‘board’. The first thing they said was, “don’t call it board.” For our part, we just did a whole lot of listening …
Adblock Browser 1.1 for Android released · 2015-11-11 07:20 by Felix Dahlke
Install Adblock Browser 1.1 for Android
Changes
- Added Baidu as the default search engine for Chinese users (Issue 2988)
- Ensured that only release users see about:feedback (Issue 3136)
Smells like censorship, Big Brother · 2015-10-23 19:35 by Ben Williams
Bild.de started blocking users of ad blocking technology recently. We basically said, OK, that’s your right. In the meantime there were discussions in our forum about a way to counter the Bild blockade — these were basically users and forum moderators discussing how they could build a filter, quite independent of ABP or any other affiliation. Just users. Just free speech at its finest. Well, Bild’s publisher asked us to take those discussions down, we declined and just this evening we received a court order forcing us to take them down.
Adblock Browser 1.1 for iOS released · 2015-10-13 11:42 by Felix Dahlke
Install Adblock Browser 1.1 for iOS
Changes
- Added Spanish and Portuguese translations
- Added Baidu as the default search engine for Chinese users (Issue 2988)
- Fixed: Fixed various issues around display of nonintrusive ads (Issue 3032, Issue 3030, Issue 3051)
- Fixed: History was not correctly cleared (Issue 3035)
- Fixed: The .club top level domain was not recognised (Issue 3101)
- Fixed: Fixed various bugs to improve usability (Issue 2987, Issue 3038, Issue 3040, Issue 3041, Issue 3042, Issue 3043, Issue 3045)
From the Manifesto to the Acceptable Ads Board · 2015-10-01 21:48 by Ben Williams
When we wrote the Acceptable Ads Manifesto last year, we were already thinking about how we might improve the Acceptable Ads initiative while stepping back from it as a company. Today, we’re happy to say that we’ve decided to commit to an idea we had long ago: an independent board made up of representatives for users, advertisers and publishers to assume complete control of Acceptable Ads.
Adblock Plus 1.0 for iOS released · 2015-09-30 10:48 by Felix Dahlke
We’re happy to announce that Apple has finally approved the first version of Adblock Plus for iOS – you can now get it on the App Store. (It took forever, we submitted shortly after it became possible to submit iOS 9 apps.)
We’re using the new content blocking API introduced in iOS 9 to provide an ad blocker for Safari on iOS, with a content blocking list generated from EasyList.
The content blocking API does, however, have some limitations that make it difficult to build a decent ad blocker with it. In addition, the inability to do any sort of UI integration makes it difficult to provide the usual Adblock Plus features in a usable way. That’s why we have a second product on iOS: Adblock Browser, a browser with ad blocking built in, which is not subject to the limitations of the content blocking API. I suggest you just try both, and use whatever suits you best.
Axel Springer goes home empty-handed in unsuccessful lawsuit against users’ rights · 2015-09-29 15:18 by Ben Williams
Axel Springer, the multibillion dollar publishing house that just today bought Business Insider for $343m and recently lost a high stakes bidding war to Japan’s largest media company, Nikkei, for rights to purchase the Financial Times, has sued our startup right here in our home town of Cologne, Germany. Once again, the courts ruled in favor of users’ rights, declaring that ad blocking is completely legal.
Adblock Plus 2.6.11 for Firefox released · 2015-09-24 01:07 by Wladimir Palant
Install Adblock Plus 2.6.11 for Firefox
Changes
- Fixed: Findbar in Filter Preferences was slightly broken when using Firefox 42 and above (issue 2832).
- Fixed: Notification pop-up shouldn’t disappear if somebody clicks outside it (issue 3060).
- Fixed: Toolbar icon broken in SeaMonkey 2.40 and above (issue 3072).
- Added promotional message for Adblock Browser to the first-run page (issue 3031).
Latest Firefox update massively improves Adblock Plus memory usage · 2015-09-23 16:06 by Ben Williams
Mozilla pushed the newest update of its Firefox browser yesterday. This will improve Adblock Plus memory usage for Firefox users immensely and immediately.