Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus 1.9.4 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2015-11-24 13:05 by Dave Vandyke

Install Adblock Plus 1.9.4 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.9.4 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.9.4 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

This update contains the new $generichide and $genericblock filter options and some bug fixes.

Changes

Fixed: Anti-Adblock warning was being triggered by frames in some cases (issue 3238).
Fixed: Key-based whitelisting was ignored for element collapsing (issue 3170).
Fixed how the “Block element” feature deals with attributes containing null character (issue 3163).
Added support for new $generichide and $genericblock filter options (issue 616, issue 647).
Improved first-run page display on small screens (issue 2018).

Adblock Plus 2.6.12 for Firefox released · 2015-11-24 12:13 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus 2.6.12 for Firefox

We are aware of an issue breaking Adblock Plus user interface in the latest Firefox nightly builds, this will be fixed in the next release. There is also an issue related to element hiding functionality in Firefox 43 and above, this one will also be addressed in the next release.

Changes

Added $generichide and $generic block filter options (issue 647, issue 616).
Improved first-run display on small screens, especially on mobile devices (issue 2018).
Fixed: Findbar in Filter Preferences is being triggered when trying to edit filters (issue 3129, issue 3144).
Fixed: Ctrl+F wasn’t working as expected when the findbar was already open (issue 2580).
Fixed: Filter composer’s “Advanced view” button was broken in Firefox nightly builds (issue 3263).
Fixed: Anti-Adblock warning shouldn’t show up when Adblock Plus is disabled (issue 3254).
Fixed: Anti-Adblock warning shouldn’t be triggered by frames (issue 3253).

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.

To the install page

#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.