Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Eyetracking study results · 2014-04-29 13:20 by Ben Williams
We just completed a joint study with media technology firm Sticky to measure how effective different types of ads are on different types of sites, in terms of things like brand perception and brand recall. Complete findings are in this Ad Effectiveness study. Have a look at a few examples of heatmap images below (click to expand); you can see all the heatmap images as well.
Data loss on Google Chrome hopefully fixed · 2014-04-29 11:26 by Wladimir Palant
There have been complains about data loss on Google Chrome for quite some time already. People complained about all filters data suddenly being gone — without any obvious reason and without any way to reproduce the issue. It seems that we’ve finally found the cause of this issue and it has been resolved in Adblock Plus 1.7.4.1165 for Chrome. Please report any issues you notice with this development build. The current plan is to have a new stable release next Tuesday, then we will see whether the fix worked (the issue is rare enough that it isn’t possible to tell anything before rolling out the fix to the entire user base). If you are interested, the details are listed in issue 361.
Element Hiding Helper 1.3 released · 2014-04-22 10:58 by Wladimir Palant
Install Element Hiding Helper 1.3
Changes
- Fixed: Integration with the Inspector tool broken in current Firefox versions (issue 5).
- Fixed: Filter Composer suggests empty domain name for host names with a trailing dot (forum topic).
- Fixed: Element Hiding Helper menu item isn’t added in some windows (forum topic).
- Fixed: Element Hiding Helper menu item doesn’t show up if Adblock Plus icon is placed in the Australis panel (issue 229).
- Fixed: Shortcut key on OS X is Ctrl-Shift-K rather than Cmd-Shift-K.
Adblock Plus 2.6 for Firefox released · 2014-04-22 09:42 by Wladimir Palant
Install Adblock Plus 2.6 for Firefox
The main focus of this release were performance improvements.
Changes
- Made sure Adblock Plus initialization doesn’t delay Firefox startup (issue 117).
- Switched to a faster way to access Adblock Plus data on disk (issue 153).
- Fixed regression in Adblock Plus 2.5.1: Adblock Plus initialization takes longer for each new window opened (issue 238).
- Fixed: Firefox Sync integration sometimes won’t work (issue 261).
- Fixed: Filter search in Filter Preferences was broken in newer Firefox versions.
- Fixed: Wrong button type displayed for Adblock Plus immediately after customizing toolbar in Firefox 29 and above (bug 981543).
- Fixed: Homepage link is displayed in Filter Preference even if the subscription doesn’t define a homepage (issue 48).
- Fixed: Pop-up blocker won’t work in some scenarios (issue 341).
- Various code cleanup tasks (issue 137, issue 301, issue 354).
Element Hiding Helper integration with Inspector restored · 2014-04-15 16:26 by Wladimir Palant
When Firefox 10 introduced the Inspector tool we promptly started using it in Element Hiding Helper. Selecting elements with the Inspector tool is easier than with Element Hiding Helper and one only has to click the EHH button in the Inspector toolbar to hide it then. Unfortunately, the developer tools API wasn’t quite as stable as expected and changes to it broke the integration again. Sorry that it took us so long but starting with Element Hiding Helper 1.2.4a.458 everything should be working again. Element Hiding Helper 1.3 is currently scheduled to be released next Tuesday (April 22nd).
Adblock Plus 2.6 for Firefox release candidate available · 2014-04-15 11:51 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus 2.5.1.3795 development build is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 2.6, the release is currently scheduled for next Tuesday (April 22nd). The list of changes in this release:
- Made sure Adblock Plus initialization doesn’t delay Firefox startup (issue 117).
- Switched to a faster way to access Adblock Plus data on disk (issue 153).
- Fixed regression in Adblock Plus 2.5.1: Adblock Plus initialization takes longer for each new window opened (issue 238).
- Fixed: Firefox Sync integration sometimes won’t work (issue 261).
- Fixed: Filter search in Filter Preferences was broken in newer Firefox versions.
- Fixed: Wrong button type displayed for Adblock Plus immediately after customizing toolbar in Firefox 29 and above (bug 981543).
- Fixed: Homepage link is displayed in Filter Preference even if the subscription doesn’t define a homepage (issue 48).
- Various code cleanup tasks (issue 137, issue 301).
Sign our Acceptable Ads Manifesto · 2014-04-04 16:05 by Jessica Ciesielski
Yesterday we launched, together with PageFair, Reddit, Customer Commons and the Anti-Advertising Agency our Acceptable Ads Manifesto. The manifesto aims to collect signatures from organizations and internet users who want to make the internet a better place for everyone.
Adblock Plus 1.2.1 for Android released · 2014-04-03 11:22 by Wladimir Palant
Install Adblock Plus for Android
If you already have Adblock Plus for Android, it should notify you about the update shortly and download it automatically.
Important note: We strongly encourage you to install this release as soon as possible, it fixes a security issue present in all previous Adblock Plus for Android versions.
In addition to that, this fixes a bug in the previous version that caused development builds to be offered as updates for the release version. Because of that issue most Adblock Plus for Android users are using development builds now so this release will be offered as an update for development builds as well. This unfortunately also includes users who explicitly chose to install development builds — if that’s true for you please install Adblock Plus 1.2.1.319 for Android manually to get back to the development build channel.
Manifesto URL not working? Here's a temporary alternate · 2014-04-02 17:27 by Job Plas
Today, with four other organizations, we released our Acceptable Ads Manifesto. We’re doing so in order to make our stance on advertising clear and to encourage individuals and organizations to join us in this stance. The five key tenets of it are listed below.
New approach to hard drive access · 2014-03-21 19:14 by Wladimir Palant
Starting with Adblock Plus 2.5.1.3785 we switched to a new way to access the hard drive. Ideally there shouldn’t be any visible changes, Adblock Plus simply won’t cause occasional delays in Firefox on hard drive access. It might also fix the startup delays some people are still reporting despite our previous changes. The required functionality is only available starting with Firefox 19 which is why this development build and future Adblock Plus releases will no longer install in older Firefox versions.
Technical details: Adblock Plus now uses OS.File API to make sure the hard drive is never being accessed on the main thread. Previously Adblock Plus was using rather weird hacks to achieve the same goal, that worked only for reading and writing files however — not for renaming files for example.