Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Faster filter matching algorithm · 2010-11-26 17:04 by Wladimir Palant
It has been a while since I looked into filter matching algorithms and settled on the one that Adblock Plus still uses today, mostly unchanged. However, a simpler algorithm with even better performance characteristics was suggested recently, this algorithm is implemented in the current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.5a.20101125). The side-effect is that many filters will now be marked as slow, filter subscriptions will need to adapt to take full advantage of this algorithm (forum topic). This is why this change will most likely be reverted before Adblock Plus 1.3.5 release and only released with Adblock Plus 1.4.
Other changes since Adblock Plus 1.3.1 release:
- Subscription selection: Really hiding progress indicator after full list of subscriptions loads, it causes significant CPU load despite being in background.
- Issue reporter: Now sending URL of the referring page as well to make dealing with pop-ups easier.
- Performance: patterns.ini is no longer saved on application shutdown if nothing changed.
- Fixed: Hit counts for filters aren’t saved automatically on application shutdown in Firefox 4.
- Fixed: Linux: Links in Adblock Plus user interface always open in an external application (bug 23441).
- Fixed: List of recently submitted issues has a horizontal scrollbar with some themes (forum topic).
- Fixed: When displaying toolbar icons with text, text for the Adblock Plus icon displays to the right of the icon (forum topic).
- Fixed: Adblock Plus icon is broken in SeaMonkey Mail (nightly builds only).
Status update: 2010-11-19 · 2010-11-26 16:35 by Wladimir Palant
Done
- Added a way to change status of a issue reports, with an optional notification sent out to the user.
- Improved sorting of report columns.
- More discussions on issue reporter improvements.
In progress
- Refactoring of Python scripts used on adblockplus.org to make them easier to change and maintain.
Status update: 2010-11-14 · 2010-11-26 16:21 by Wladimir Palant
Worked 4 days on Adblock Plus this week.
Done
- Subscription authors are now getting notifications about new issue reports, choosing between daily and weekly digests is also possible.
- Added sorting functionality to report columns.
- Implemented a bunch of improvements to the digest emails to allow spotting “good” reports more easily.
- Discussed a bunch of other improvement proposals for issue reports.
- Looked into issues that people using icon with text are experiencing – found an undocumented solution, let’s hope that it won’t break with the next Firefox release.
- Fixed toolbar icon in SeaMonkey Mail nightlies (nobody reported this issue, I guess nobody noticed?).
Comments are now automatically disabled after 6 weeks · 2010-11-24 15:42 by Wladimir Palant
For a long time the policy for this blog was: comments are always welcome. However, I noticed that there are some discussions going on in several years old blog posts that I am not really following any more. And I started thinking: what was the last time that a genuinely useful comment was received on an older blog post? I mean, a comment that wasn’t spam, off-topic, rehashing of arguments that have been mentioned years ago, something that would be better off in the forum. And I don’t remember when this happened the last time. Typically, all the useful comments arrive in the first few weeks after the article is posted and after that it’s only stuff that nobody will ever read (not even me). So: sorry, comments will now be automatically disabled on blog posts that are older than 6 weeks. If somebody stumbles upon my blog by following a random link, he/she is probably better off creating a forum post rather than commenting in the blog.
Newsletter for subscription authors #1: Adblock Plus 1.3 and beyond · 2010-11-09 17:16 by Wladimir Palant
This mail provides important information for filter subscription authors about Adblock Plus 1.3, changes expected in Adblock Plus 1.4 release and Firefox 4.
Status update: 2010-11-05 · 2010-11-05 21:12 by Wladimir Palant
Worked 4 days on Adblock Plus this week. The releases on Tuesday/Wednesday were very stressful, so I am slowing down.
Done
- Adblock Plus 1.3/1.3.1, Element Hiding Helper 1.1, Diagnostics 1.1.3 released
- Fixed a few minor issues reported for these releases, nothing critical so far
- Created an extension to generate Adblock Plus screenshots, used it to update screenshots/“translate” them to more languages
- Caught up with forum/email again, somewhat
Expected server downtime · 2010-11-05 14:02 by Wladimir Palant
The server will be unreachable for some time later today. This is necessary to move adblockplus.org to a more powerful server which should hopefully resolve the connectivity issues lately. Everything should be done within 30 minutes. However, it might happen that the IP address of the server changes — in this case it will take a while until everybody can reach the server again (due to DNS caching).
Diagnostics 1.1.3 for Adblock Plus (formerly Adblock Plus Watcher) released · 2010-11-03 13:33 by Wladimir Palant
Diagnostics 1.1.3 for Adblock Plus has been released. This version is compatible to Adblock Plus 1.3, older Adblock Plus versions are no longer supported.
Element Hiding Helper 1.1 released · 2010-11-03 13:28 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Compatible with Adblock Plus 1.3, older Adblock Plus versions are no longer supported
- Compatible with Firefox 4, dropped support for Firefox 3.0
- Generating more efficient filters by default
- Better handling of elements with multiple classes
- More reliable approach to determine and mark element position
- Selecting parent node and moving to a different child no longer resets selection
- New “lock/unlock selection” command
- Ctrl+Mousewheel can be used to trigger wider/narrower commands
- Alternative set of hotkeys in some languages where two keyboard layouts are possible (e.g. Russian)
- Better styling of hotkeys in tooltips
- All preferences are now stored under extensions.elemhidehelper.*
- Hotkey Ctrl-Shift-S will be used if Ctrl-Shift-K is taken (e.g. in Firefox 4), can be changed in extensions.elemhidehelper.selectelement_key preference
- Own icon and About dialog, better mechanism to manage the dependency on Adblock Plus
- Composer warns now if the filter is being added to a disabled group
- extensions.elemhidehelper.composer_defaultDomain preference determines which domain suggestion is selected by default
- Added hidden preference to allow selecting in local files (rules created this way will have no effect)
Adblock Plus 1.3.1 released · 2010-11-03 13:22 by Wladimir Palant
Note: Adblock Plus 1.3 release was pulled due to an issue with the builds.
Major changes
- New issue reporter allows notifying subscription authors about issues easily
- Better Firefox 4 support, dropped support for Firefox 3.0
- Significantly improved performance and memory use