Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Are undetectable changes to a native prototype possible? · 2011-07-11 14:27 by Wladimir Palant
This is a follow-up to Do JavaScript proxies allow undetectable function wrappers?. After that blog post I managed to solve the main problem: with Function.toString() and Function.toSource() being the only information leaks (bug 650299) one only needs to wrap these functions as well to get undetectable function proxies. However, the remaining problem is manipulating Window.prototype.open so that it actually returns my wrapper and the webpage can neither detect nor revert this manipulation.
Adblock Plus 1.3.9 released · 2011-06-28 17:54 by Wladimir Palant
Note: As usually, the update notification might take a while — this release needs to be reviewed on AMO first.
Major changes
- Added experimental support for Firefox Sync
- New extension icons
- Updated for changes in Thunderbird 5
- Various minor fixes
Diagnostics 1.1.5 for Adblock Plus released · 2011-06-27 13:59 by Wladimir Palant
Diagnostics 1.1.5 has been released. This version updates compatibility information (compatible with all current Firefox branches) and contains a new icon.
Install Diagnostics 1.1.5 for Adblock Plus
Firefox Sync support added · 2011-05-31 18:51 by Wladimir Palant
Firefox Sync support is a feature that has been under development for the past two years. It seems that we finally have something that is stable enough to be included in Adblock Plus, you can test it in Adblock Plus 1.3.9a.3030. Please note that we now support Sync both for desktop and mobile Firefox versions and that it will become the preferred way of getting complicated Adblock Plus settings over to Firefox Mobile (Adblock Plus user interface on mobile is very minimalistic and doesn’t allow configuring anything complicated directly).
Remarks:
- This feature is still very experimental.
- Syncing Adblock Plus filters isn’t switched on by default even if Firefox Sync is configured. You need to go to the Adblock Plus menu and enable “Sync Adblock Plus settings” under “Options”.
- The option will only be visible if the browser supports Sync and Sync is set up. In Firefox 3.5/3.6 you will need to install the Firefox Sync extension.
- At this point, Sync does not create an exact copy of the Adblock Plus settings. Order of filters/subscriptions isn’t synced, neither are hit counts. Disabled filters in filter subscriptions will not be disabled in the remote system (a disabled custom filter on the other hand will be disabled).
- If changes to filter/subscription are made both locally and remotely (merge conflict) local changes always win.
Another notable change in this development build: Adblock Plus icons have been updated (forum topic).
Adblock Plus 1.3.8 released · 2011-05-23 10:53 by Wladimir Palant
Note: As usually, an update notification might take a while — this release needs to be reviewed on AMO first.
Major changes
- Fixed: Corruption in Adblock Plus data files might result in Adblock Plus being unable to block anything
- Fixed some minor SeaMonkey 2.1 issues
- Some minor improvements to the issue reporter
Update on AMO's performance tests · 2011-05-18 18:02 by Wladimir Palant
I forgot to update my overview of AMO’s performance measurements for their latest test run on May 14th, done it now. As Alice Nodelman notes, a bunch of bugs has been fixed on the technical side. Six weeks after the campaign announcement it finally looks like the most critical bugs are fixed and the numbers are mostly reliable.
Running Linux in the browser · 2011-05-17 18:50 by Wladimir Palant
I haven’t seen it mentioned on Planet yet, could it be that nobody heard? I’ve seen lots of cool browser demos lately but this one really blows me away: jslinux by Fabrice Bellard. This is a real x86 emulator written in JavaScript and running Linux, not a fake Linux terminal. The emulated hardware is somewhat limited (e.g. no FPU) but this doesn’t make packing an emulator into less than 20 kB of JavaScript code less impressive. The emulator loads a bunch of binary Linux images and — voilà, Linux boots up.
Signing Firefox extensions with Python and M2Crypto · 2011-05-15 00:07 by Wladimir Palant
Sadly, signing Firefox extensions isn’t easy. I’ve seen people give up not having mastered even the very first step (install NSS). And after that you have to use its cryptic command line tools to set up a database, import your certificate into it as well as any intermediate or root certificates required, and then actually use signtool to sign your files. Java’s signtool is easier to handle but incompatible (though, I think the only real difference is that it doesn’t put zigbert.rsa first in the archive). So while rewriting my build scripts in Python I took it as a chance and implemented signing in Python using M2Crypto module. One of the advantages for me was that my build script can now package up the extension entirely in memory, without having to write out intermediate results for signing.
Adblock Plus 1.3.7 released · 2011-05-10 16:52 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- Added Brasilian Portuguese translation again
- Slightly improved performance
- Fixed a potential memory leak (only occurring under rare conditions)
- Various minor fixes
Adblock Plus for Google Chrome™ (Beta) 1.1.3 released · 2011-05-06 16:51 by Wladimir Palant
Install Adblock Plus for Google Chrome™
Changes
- Worked around Chrome issue 81530 (was breaking videos on Amazon)
- Improved blocking of page backgrounds (forum topic)
- Added more websites to the list of workarounds for WebKit bug 45586
- Made extension name localizable
- Improved extension description
- Fixed: Adblock Plus still triggers WebKit bug 45586 even when disabled (bug 23774)