Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Major platform update for Adblock Plus/Chrome · 2012-08-28 16:27 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus 1.2.0.812 for Chrome got a huge update that brought its code in line with current Adblock Plus for Firefox state as well as prepared it for upcoming Chrome changes. More changes will be implemented now (including ones that will actually be visible), in the meantime please test this build and report back if something is broken.
Important note: Unfortunately, Chrome developers decided that extension installations from third-party websites should be complicated. Please read the Chrome installation notes on the page linked above. Yes, I feel your pain :-(
Customizations 1.0.3 for Adblock Plus released · 2012-08-22 13:56 by Wladimir Palant
This is the first localized release of Customizations, a bunch of translations have been added already. This is our pilot project using Crowdin for translations, feel free to register there and suggest improvements to existing translations. Other extensions will use this translation platform as well in future.
Adblock Plus 2.1.2 released · 2012-07-20 00:19 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Some startup time and memory use improvements
Modularization in a restartless extension · 2012-07-12 17:21 by Wladimir Palant
A simple restartless extension can probably keep all its code in the bootstrap.js file. However, it gets crowded there very soon. Plus there is some code that is really only boilerplate and should probably kept separate from your actual code.
This sounds like a job for JavaScript code modules. It is mostly a matter of taste (I prefer CommonJS module syntax) but there is one really big disadvantage of JavaScript code modules: they have to be unloaded explicitly when your extension is shut down. Which means that you either have to keep a list of modules to unload in your bootstrap.js file or add cleanup code each time you load a module. I find neither approach very compelling.
Why you should make your next add-on restartless · 2012-07-12 14:18 by Wladimir Palant
Note: This article is not about extensions based on the Add-on SDK (Jetpack). You don’t have to use the SDK to create a restartless extension. Just wanted to point this out explicitly to avoid confusion.
An extension that will install without requiring a Firefox restart? This was a nightmare to develop not too long ago. Fortunately, things changed and the last showstopper bug was fixed in Firefox 8. Effort to create a restartless (or bootstrapped as it is called officially) extension is acceptable now. In fact, I have converted all my extensions and removed support for classic non-restartless extensions from my build tools — I am certain that I am not going back.
Adblock Plus 2.1.1 released · 2012-07-03 14:50 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Improved startup performance.
- Filter preferences: improved display in right-to-left locales.
- Fixed: Adblock Plus might break extensions like IE Tab using NPAPI plugins.
- Fixed: Filter subscriptions are no longer being updated automatically.
- Fixed: Firefox Sync support isn’t working.
Customizations 1.0.1 for Adblock Plus released · 2012-06-28 22:20 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Updated for Adblock Plus 2.1
- Added option to change display of “Non-intrusive ads” filter list
- Removed “Remove Enabled checkbox label” option, Adblock Plus no longer displays that label
Adblock Plus 2.1 released · 2012-06-28 17:53 by Wladimir Palant
- Adblock Plus can be installed without restarting the browser now.
- Added support for Firefox Mobile 14.
- Improved Thunderbird integration.
- Updated for upcoming Firefox releases (especially Firefox 15).
Where did the Adblock Plus unit tests go? · 2012-06-23 17:13 by Wladimir Palant
You probably asked yourself already what happened to the Adblock Plus unit tests. What? You didn’t? You don’t even know what unit tests are? Oops… Sorry about having bothered you. I guess nobody is reading past this point but I just have to explain it nevertheless.
Adblock Plus 2.1 release candidate available - restartless edition · 2012-06-23 16:47 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus can finally be installed/disabled/enabled without a browser restart. This feature took much longer to develop than expected and there were a bunch of glitches when it first hit the development builds but most of these seem to be resolved now. So the current development build (Adblock Plus 2.1rc.3495) is a release candidate. Adblock Plus 2.1 is expected to be released on Wednesday (June 27th).
Important changes
- Installing, uninstalling, updating the extension no longer requires you to restart the browser. Note that you will have to restart the browser when updating from a non-restartless version of Adblock Plus.
- Adblock Plus should no longer be affected by misbehaving extensions.
- Better Thunderbird support, Adblock Plus is now usable in tabs displaying web pages as well.
- Added support for Firefox Mobile with native UI (next Firefox Mobile version currently in Beta).
- Made our toolbar/addon bar button more reliable: it will no longer disappear if the toolbar is customized when Adblock Plus is disabled and it will remember its previous position if removed.
- The development builds work reliably in Firefox 15 and above – there were several changes that affected Adblock Plus (especially bug 650353).
- A new filter type has been implemented: element hiding exceptions (forum topic). These are mostly useful for authors of complementary filter subscriptions that need to restrict an overly general filter from the main subscription. Everybody else can just edit the original filter instead.
- Filter subscriptions are automatically updated when reporting a false positive (forum topic).
- Filter subscriptions can set a fixed title for themselves using the
! Titlecomment (forum topic). This also allows us to display subscription titles in bold now. - Filter Preferences: “Enabled” checkboxes have been moved to the left, italics are no longer used for disabled filters (forum topic).
- Filter Preferences: Links in the subscription list now have the same color as the rest of the text to prevent them from being indistinguishable from the background (forum topic).
- The shortcut key for blockable items will be Ctrl-Shift-U in Firefox 15 and above. Sorry but our beloved Ctrl-Shift-V key is otherwise occupied.
- Our custom About dialog is gone, Adblock Plus is using the built-in dialog now.
Known issues
- Package size increased considerably. This is a side-effect of different packaging approach which is recommended starting with Firefox 4 to improve startup performance (no inner JAR file).
- The development builds are no longer signed and neither will be the final release. This is due to bug 765676.
- Firefox Mobile with XUL-based UI (meaning the currently stable Firefox Mobile release) is no longer supported. Unfortunately, it seems to have a bug that will cause random issues when a restartless extension is updated. From what I can tell, we cannot work around it and it is unlikely to be fixed either with this particular Firefox Mobile variant nearing its end of life. You will have to continue using Adblock Plus 2.0.3 here.
- Disabling Adblock Plus extension during a browsing session doesn’t release all memory used by it, some memory remains allocated until you reload all pages that had element hiding rules applied to them. This is unfortunately unavoidable, the effect is rather small however (around 0.5 MB in my tests but might depend on the number of open tabs).
- The “Contribute” button will appear again even if you removed it earlier in a non-restartless Adblock Plus version. Also, the blockable items height will be reset. This is unfortunately unavoidable, these choices have to be stored differently now that the extension is restartless.
- Toolbar icon position is supposed to be kept when updating from a non-restartless Adblock Plus version, there were reports however that it isn’t working. I will look into it, in the meantime just customize the toolbar again and move the icon wherever you would like to have it.