Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Element Hiding Helper: the restartless edition · 2012-01-04 14:00 by Wladimir Palant
Starting with Element Hiding Helper 1.2a.361 the Element Hiding Helper extension installs and uninstalls without a browser restart as well. You can also enable or disable Element Hiding Helper immediately in the Add-ons Manager. However, you will still need to restart your browser when updating from an older extension version because this older version cannot shut down while the browser is running. As with the Diagnostics extension, a reasonably new application version is required (at least Firefox 8, Thunderbird 8, SeaMonkey 2.5), old versions are no longer supported.
Another important change: Element Hiding Helper will no longer warn you if Adblock Plus isn’t installed, we will instead rely on AMO to communicate this to users. One reason for removing this check is that Adblock Plus should also become restartless in future which will make checking for its presence a lot more complicated.
Measuring the memory use of an SDK (Jetpack) based add-on · 2012-01-04 11:37 by Wladimir Palant
Add-on SDK 1.2.1 added a nifty feature: starting with Firefox 9 the memory usage of add-ons built with the SDK is visible in about:memory. However, if you actually try to use this feature you get lost in the sheer amount of compartments. Each module gets its own compartment and the SDK has lots and lots of them. This even prompted a user to report “zombie compartments” caused by my only SDK-based add-on so far.
Diagnostics for Adblock Plus: the restartless edition · 2012-01-02 10:51 by Wladimir Palant
Creating extensions that can be installed, uninstalled and updated without a browser restart used to be very painful but got a whole lot easier with Firefox 8. I am now making all my add-ons restartless, Diagnostics for Adblock Plus is the first try. The current development build (Diagnostics 1.2b.156) should work exactly like the previous versions but e.g. disable immediately if you click the corresponding button in the Add-ons Manager. Reasonably new browser versions are required (at least Firefox 8, Thunderbird 8, SeaMonkey 2.5), old versions are no longer supported.
Customizations 1.0 for Adblock Plus released · 2011-12-27 18:40 by Wladimir Palant
This is the first Customizations for Adblock Plus release. This extension provides a collection of semi-supported user interface tweaks for Adblock Plus. It can be installed without restarting the browser — easy to try. More information
First Customizations for Adblock Plus development builds · 2011-12-22 18:51 by Wladimir Palant
Customizations for Adblock Plus is a new extension providing some advanced semi-supported customization options. The goal is to make the customizations such as the ones described in the FAQ more comfortable and easier to try. The extension installs without requiring a browser restart, clicking the Options button in the Add-ons Manager shows the available options. Right now we have:
- Vertical layout for Filter Preferences (filters below subscriptions)
- Some more options for Filter Preferences to save space
- Toolbar icon display configuration (text and/or icon)
- Removing Adblock Plus from all browser menus
- Two hidden Adblock Plus options (left-click action for the toolbar icon and default selection for the Filter Composer)
Adblock Plus 2.0.2 released · 2011-12-21 17:52 by Wladimir Palant
- Improved texts describing “non-intrusive ads” feature.
- Made toolbar icon properly customizable in Thunderbird.
- Fixed: Filter editing is broken in Firefox 3.6.
- Firefox Mobile: Fixed user interface to handle “non-intrusive ads” feature properly.
Random thought on communities · 2011-12-15 23:46 by Wladimir Palant
Being in charge of a popular project has its highs and lows. On the one hand, creating something that is used by many people can be highly rewarding. You have a large community that supports you, there are many people willing to do their part. But then there are times when an unpopular change needs to be done, and as your community grows almost any change will make you unpopular with somebody. All the sudden you get people yelling at you — lots of people suddenly need to tell you how stupid that change is and what you should have done instead. It’s highly demotivating and makes you want to avoid uncomfortable changes. But that’s a dead end leading to a dead project.
Few words from the first employee · 2011-12-15 20:27 by Andrey Novikov
Thank you for the warm welcome. I am very glad to join the great team developing the world’s most popular plug-in. As Wladimir mentioned my first task is to refine user interface of Adblock Plus for Chrome.
Adblock Plus 2.0.1 released · 2011-12-14 11:57 by Wladimir Palant
This release is fixing a few minor issues compared to Adblock Plus 2.0. Main reason for the release is a change to the compatibility information.
Adblock Plus 2.0 released · 2011-12-13 16:59 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- Experimental pop-up blocking support for the cases where the built-in pop-up blocker fails.
- New Filter Preferences dialog makes managing filters and subscriptions easier.
- Custom filters can be organized into any number of filter groups.
- Backup and Restore functionality allows creating a copy of all filter preferences, not just custom filters.
- Added “Allow non-intrusive advertising” setting (can be changed in Filter Preferences, documentation).