Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus user survey results [Part 1] · 2011-11-07 12:18 by Wladimir Palant

The previous blog post explains how we implemented the survey, now it is time to start analyzing the results (sorry about keeping you waiting). Here we want to look at the results of the first page where we asked general questions, mainly to get an idea of who is responding and to allow segmentation of the results. By now we have 1552 completed submissions. The number of answers is slightly different for each question however — all answers were optional and we had to throw out some answers because they were clearly invalid.

Tags: adblock plus

Better "Add filter" dialog · 2011-11-05 00:50 by Wladimir Palant

Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.1.4.719 features an improved “Add filters” dialog that webpage can no longer mess with. This allowed implementing two long-standing requests:

Filters can be modified before adding.
The dialog buttons can be triggered with Enter and Esc keys (use Shift-Enter to insert a newline into the list).

Dragging the window around is still somewhat awkward (displayed mouse cursor doesn’t match the action, window sometimes won’t follow) but other than that it seems to work fine.

In other news:

If Adblock Plus fails to “remember” your filter subscriptions, that’s Chrome issue 103018. Removing the directory “LOCALAPPDATA\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\File System\Origins” restores normal functionality. Current development builds will automatically re-add default subscriptions on data loss (a lame workaround but the only one possible it seems).
Support for abp: links has been added yesterday so that the “Subscribe” links on the subscriptions page can be used now.

To the install page

Tags: adblock plus chrome development builds

Improved data format in Chrome · 2011-10-26 10:21 by Wladimir Palant

Note: The changes described here caused a critical regression in the non-experimental builds (blocking essentially disabled), sorry about that. This issue has been fixed in Adblock Plus 1.1.4.708.

Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.1.4.705 underwent a major rearchitecturing effort. Main goal was to use the same data format as Adblock Plus in Firefox, a number of other areas have been touched as well. The expected changes:

Google Chrome 9 and above is required now (previously Google Chrome 6 was still supported, at least theoretically).
Local Storage now only contains options, the actual filter data is stored in files on disk. One side-effect of this change is that quota-related errors should be gone. Locating the files on disk isn’t trivial but they can be viewed under filesystem:chrome-extension://ldcecbkkoecffmfljeihcmifjjdoepkn/persistent/ in the browser (filesystem:chrome-extension://cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb/persistent/ for the release version). File format is identical to patterns.ini in Firefox.
There should no longer be hangs when some user interface features are used. If you still see a hang after some button is clicked or similar please let us know.
Downloading of filter subscriptions works the same as in Firefox now. This means among other things that EasyList downloads will be distributed to the various mirrors instead of being limited to the main download mirror. Only limitation: filter subscriptions that change location by means of an HTTP redirect (301) cannot be recognized.
Some improvements to the Options user interface have been implemented. This is most noticeable in “Filter lists” tab: it now only displays the subscriptions that have been added. More subscriptions can be added by clicking “Add filter subscription” – this works same as in Firefox now, also the list of recommendations is identical (recommendations matching browser’s user interface locale are highlighted).
Messaging around “Easy create filter” feature has been simplified. There should be no visible effects of this change.

If you notice that something doesn’t work as expected please let us know.

To the install page

Adblock Plus user survey results [Part 0] · 2011-10-10 10:43 by Wladimir Palant

Please note that this will be the only post to be syndicated to Planet Mozilla, the other parts of this series will appear in my blog only — I can imagine that most readers of Planet have very little interest in what I am writing here. If you are interested in the full analysis of the results, please visit my blog in a few days.

At the moment we have 1360 responses to the user survey which is more than enough to start analyzing the results. There will be some more responses before the survey ends but we don’t expect to get much more than 1500 responses and the overall results shouldn’t change significantly.

Do-Not-Track support in the experimental builds · 2011-10-04 20:50 by Wladimir Palant

Starting with Adblock Plus for Chrome 1.1.4.698 the experimental builds come with Do Not Track support that works the same as in Firefox. The current implementation isn’t the most efficient, this will be improved later.

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Dropped support for old browser versions including Firefox 3.5 · 2011-10-04 10:59 by Wladimir Palant

Starting with Adblock Plus 1.3.11a.3172 old browser versions based on Gecko versions older than Gecko 1.9.2.13 will no longer be supported. This change is performed to simplify Adblock Plus code as well as to make regression testing easier again. This means in detail:

Firefox 3.5 is no longer supported. Anybody still using it should update to a current Firefox version ASAP given that Firefox 3.5 is no longer supported by Mozilla and has known security issues. Similarly, Thunderbird 3.0 is no longer supported.
Only reasonably recent Firefox 3.6.x releases are supported (Firefox 3.6.13 or newer). If you are running one of the older versions you should update ASAP, at least to Firefox 3.6.23 which is the current release on this branch. Similarly, users running Thunderbird 3.1.x need Thunderbird 3.1.7 or newer (preferably Thunderbird 3.1.9 which is the current release on this branch).
Firefox Mobile 1.1 is no longer supported, at least Firefox Mobile 4.0 is required.
SeaMonkey 2.0 is no longer supported, at least SeaMonkey 2.1 is required.
Prism support has been removed. With Prism development no longer being continued the last release uses an outdated Gecko version.
Songbird support has been removed. Even most current Songbird releases use an outdated and insecure Gecko version, so using Songbird’s browser component is not recommendable.

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Experimental pop-up blocking support · 2011-10-03 16:29 by Wladimir Palant

The current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.11a.3162) added support for blocking pop-ups directly, working for Gecko 1.9.2.6 (meaning Firefox 3.6.6) and higher. Filters will not block pop-ups by default, only if the $popup type option is specified. So one can use the filter ||livejasmin.com^$popup to block all pop-up windows opening livejasmin.com. Or one could use ||livejasmin.com^$popup,domain=example.com to prevent only example.com from opening such pop-ups. Pop-ups opened by a page will appear in the list of blockable items and can be blocked from there.

For subscription authors: if you add pop-up blocking rules to your filter list you might want to do it in a backwards compatible way: ||livejasmin.com^$popup,image,~image. This makes sure that the filter doesn’t block anything in Adblock Plus versions that don’t know the $popup option.

Known issues:

If the pop-up opens in a new window rather than a new tab you will briefly see the pop-up window. This window is closed before running any code ~~and sending any network requests~~ however. Edit: The initial network request is actually being sent in this case but is canceled immediately after receiving HTTP headers.
For each pop-up opened you will see an additional about:blank entry in the list of blockable items. This is due to how Gecko works, a new window always loads about:blank before loading the actual pop-up target.
For same-origin pop-ups (opening page and pop-up are from the same host) you will get only the about:blank entry. This is a Gecko limitation, so for such pop-ups you will only be able to block all pop-ups or none.

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Introducing Eyeo GmbH, the company behind Adblock Plus · 2011-09-30 12:04 by Wladimir Palant

A few weeks ago we (meaning Till Faida and me) founded a new company called Eyeo GmbH (pronounced aɪ-o). Yesterday I got the official confirmation that all the formalities are done. This company will help us fund continued development of Adblock Plus now. My official title is “Managing director” now but don’t worry: I will continue doing what I’ve always done — lead Adblock Plus development and make sure that we have a great product to present. And Till will make sure that the business part works and we get money to put into the development (ok, that’s pretty much what he has been doing all along). And our community will hopefully continue being the great help it always was.

Improved experimental builds · 2011-09-29 11:50 by Wladimir Palant

The experimental development builds starting with Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.1.4.694 will disable the “old” blocking functionality now, only the new webRequest API will be used for blocking. This improves performance and memory use, it also makes sure that issues with dynamically loaded images no longer happen. I can only see one side-effect: blocked images are no longer collapsed, instead you will see a “broken image” placeholder.

Also, experimental builds will now appear as “Adblock Plus for Google Chrome (Beta) experimental build” in the extensions list, this way you can always check whether you are running the experimental or the “normal” build.

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Automatic updates to Adblock Plus 1.3.10 temporarily disabled [Update] · 2011-09-29 07:49 by Wladimir Palant

Yesterday I asked Mozilla to put Adblock Plus 1.3.10 into the sandbox again to disable automatic updates. This is not because anything is wrong with Adblock Plus 1.3.10, it is actually because of a bug in Firefox 7 — updating the browser while an extension update is pending makes that extension disappear from the list. Mozilla promised a solution in the next few days at which point the automatic updates can be enabled again.