Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus user survey results [Part 3] · 2011-12-09 15:41 by Wladimir Palant

Previous parts were: survey set-up, general questions, Adblock Plus functionality. Now we want to look at how people perceive the role of Adblock Plus on the web. This was the last page of the survey.

Release candidate for Adblock Plus 2.0 available · 2011-12-09 13:54 by Wladimir Palant

All the necessary changes are done and the development builds starting with Adblock Plus 2.0rc.3323 are release candidates for Adblock Plus 2.0. If everything goes well it will be released on Monday.

Changes since the previous announcement:

Adblock Plus options are now displayed directly on its page in Add-ons Manager (in Firefox 7 and above, in older versions the Options button opens toolbar icon’s menu).
Changed the way the toolbar icon is being hidden, now it can always be brought back via toolbar customization.
Status bar icon is no longer being displayed in Firefox version with add-on bar (there is no real status bar).
List of blockable items can now be searched both by localized type name as well as by the corresponding filter option (forum topic).
When recommended subscriptions are being added the language no longer becomes part of the subscription title.
An “Adblock Plus” menu has been added to the classic Tools menu for reasons of keyboard accessibility, the Adblock Plus menu entry in the View menu has been removed.
Added a warning if a subscription contains disabled filters (forum topic).
Fixed: Don’t create new filter groups for filters being added if a user-defined group is already available (forum topic).
Fixed: Using context menu prevents a memory compartment from being released (forum topic).
Lots of polishing, especially on the new Filter Preferences dialog.

To the install page

Element Hiding Helper 1.1.4 released · 2011-12-08 14:50 by Wladimir Palant

Install Element Hiding Helper 1.1.4

Previous release had a bug which caused it to malfunction in Firefox versions before Firefox 10. This has been corrected now.

Element Hiding Helper 1.1.3 released · 2011-12-08 10:22 by Wladimir Palant

Install Element Hiding Helper 1.1.3

Changes

Fixed: Element selector prevents a memory compartment from being released (forum topic).
Fixed: Some websites display their content on top of element markers.

Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus · 2011-12-05 12:19 by Wladimir Palant

The development build last Friday introduced a new feature that took many people by surprise: Allowing acceptable ads. Sorry about that, I am usually trying to announce large functionality changes in a timely manner but that didn’t work this time. As of Adblock Plus 2.0b.3277 the current state is:

“Allow non-intrusive advertising” option is enabled by default for all users but the ones using privacy filter lists (EasyPrivacy, Fanboy’s Tracking, Adverisity Privacy). The documentation explains why it has to be enabled by default.
The first-run page notifies users about this change, opt-out works by clicking “Filter Preferences” and unchecking the option there.
On the technical side, this option simply represents an additional filter subscription. The documentation describes how to view this filter subscription or disable the special treatment for it.
There is a forum topic with lots of my replies to questions concerning this feature.

Other changes since the previous announcement:

Filter search is now possible in the Filter Preferences.
“Collapse blocked elements” option has been renamed into “Hide placeholders of blocked elements”.
“Count filter hits” is now a visible option.
Added “Reset hit statistics” filter action.
Added warning for filter subscriptions requiring a newer Adblock Plus version.
Updating all filter subscriptions is now possible using Ctrl-Shift-T keyboard shortcut (not visible in the user interface).
Fixed: Filter groups should also have “Show/hide filters” in their Actions menu.
Fixed: ABP menu still has the old “Preferences” menu item.
Fixed: Dragging a filter subscription might display as a button or menu being dragged.

To the install page

New Filter Preferences dialog and more · 2011-12-01 17:25 by Wladimir Palant

Huge changes that were living on the “experimental” branch just landed, we are now in the Beta phase for Adblock Plus 2.0. The most notable changes in Adblock Plus 2.0b.3255:

New Filter Preferences dialog replaces the old Preferences dialog and hopefully makes managing filters and subscriptions easier.
Custom filter groups can be created, you are no longer limited by the groups created automatically.
Filter groups can contain multiple instances of the same filter (most importantly comments).
Filter subscription is now added automatically on startup, the user no longer needs to confirm (but can easily revert the decision).
The new Backup and Restore functionality allows exporting all filter data as well as custom filters only. The latter is identical to the old Import/Export but will restore filter groups.

While this functionality is finally usable we are not done yet. There are multiple known issues, most of them should be fixed over the course of the next few days:

Resetting hit counts isn’t possible yet.
Searching filters isn’t possible yet.
There is no warning message if the filter subscription requires a newer Adblock Plus version.
Filter actions and “Add filter” don’t appear disabled even when they are unavailable.
Creating filters via filter composer will create a new special filter group even when user-defined groups are available.
Filter editor ignores Home and End keys (not sure whether this can be fixed).
Actions executed on many filters (delete or remove) might take too long.

Some things that won’t change:

Enter key closes the Filter Preferences dialog, F2 has to be used to start editing a filter.
Filter editor no longer has a Close button.

If you find something else, please comment here or report a bug.

To the install page

Google Chrome and pre-installed web apps · 2011-11-15 09:47 by Wladimir Palant

Google recently launched a redesigned version of its Web Store where one can install extensions and web apps. One particular feature caught my attention: it marks the extensions that you already have with a check mark. How does the web page know which extensions you have installed?

EU MozCamp, theme development, add-on localization with adofex · 2011-11-13 18:17 by Wladimir Palant

I’m still at the EU MozCamp 2011 but Mitchell Baker already gave her closing speech and things are wrapping up. It has been an interesting weekend, a bunch of add-on related sessions among other things. One interesting conclusion that I made from the discussion: the rapid releases aren’t a real issue for extension developers and don’t create more work. Ok, I’ve suspected that much already but it was nice to have other add-on authors confirm this. In the discussion session with extension developers this topic didn’t even come up, as opposed to localization for example which is a significant pain point. AMO’s automated compatibility checks for extensions are working nicely and mark most add-ons as compatible already during the Aurora phase. There are plans that go beyond that as well and it sounds like extension compatibility will mostly become a non-issue for end users in a few Firefox releases (at least as long as binary XPCOM components aren’t used).

Diagnostics 1.1.7 for Adblock Plus released · 2011-11-12 13:01 by Wladimir Palant

Diagnostics 1.1.7 has been released. This version fixes a compatibility issue with Firefox 8.

Install Diagnostics 1.1.7 for Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus user survey results [Part 2] · 2011-11-07 15:03 by Wladimir Palant

Previous parts were: survey set-up, general questions. Now we want to look at questions about Adblock Plus functionality.