Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Downloading Xenocode's "sandboxed" applications · 2009-08-28 18:29 by Wladimir Palant
A while ago there was an announcement that the company Xenocode was providing virtualized versions of applications, particularly browsers. While what they provide isn’t real sandboxes (the applications that you run there can still write files to the disk, e.g. if you download something from the web) it is still an easy way of running browsers without having to install them — Xenocode makes sure that from application’s point of view everything that should be there after installation is there. In particular, you can run Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 on the same machine at the same time — no need for complicated registry hacks. Of course, this should only be used for testing websites that are safe, you won’t get security updates for these Internet Explorer instances.
To anybody using Firefox 2.0 or Adblock Plus 1.0.2 - it is time to upgrade · 2009-08-27 22:05 by Wladimir Palant
According to AMO statistics, there is still a considerable number of people using Adblock Plus 1.0.2 or older (around 20% of the entire user base). While there might be different reasons for that (most important one probably being the fact that current Adblock Plus versions don’t support Firefox 2), if you are one of them then I have news for you: it is time to upgrade. Seriously. Go get Adblock Plus 1.1.1 now. If you are still using Firefox 2 — go get Firefox 3.5.
Adblock Plus 1.1.1 released · 2009-08-12 20:38 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
This is mostly a bugfix release that fixes several issues in Adblock Plus 1.1.
The return of .NET Framework Assistant · 2009-08-10 11:34 by Wladimir Palant
Do you remember the commotion about Microsoft silently installing its .NET Framework Assistant extension through Windows Update? And how everybody was upset about this being forced down their throats, even without an “Uninstall” button in the add-ons window? And how Microsoft fixed at least the "Uninstall" button? And how that fix broke Adblock Plus and NoScript temporarily, causing tons of complains for both extensions? Well, the show isn’t over yet, lean back and watch.
Second Adblock Plus 1.1.1 release candidate · 2009-08-09 15:12 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus 1.1.0+.2009080913) is again a release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.1.1, the release should happen in a few days. Changes:
- Made Adblock Plus initialization more bullet-proof so that neither FoxyProxy nor Sxipper extension can disrupt it.
- Added ChinaList as recommended subscription.
- Fixed an issue with the list of blockable items: if page is loaded while the list of blockable items is open the list would sometimes be incomplete.
Adblock Plus 1.1.1 release candidate · 2009-08-08 17:17 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus 1.1.0+.2009080815) is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.1.1, the release should happen in a few days. Three more issues have been fixed:
- Conflict with the FoxyProxy extension preventing Adblock Plus from blocking anything
- Conflict with the ImageToolbar extension preventing “Collapse blocked elements” feature from working
- Another scenario where Adblock Plus might slow down some webpages
Two Adblock Plus 1.1 regressions fixed · 2009-08-05 04:30 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus 1.1.0+.2009080502) fixes two regressions released with Adblock Plus 1.1:
- Adblock Plus causes the browser to hang on some webpages, sometimes up to the point that the “unresponsive script” message appears.
- Collapsing of blocked items sometimes fails to work correctly, placeholders of blocked images become visible despite “Collapse blocked elements” option enabled.
Seth Godin on marketing · 2009-08-04 20:53 by Wladimir Palant
Joel Spolsky tipped me off on this highly interesting talk by Seth Godin. It is a full hour of video but it is well worth watching. It has a very convincing analysis of everything that is wrong with the advertising industry today. What’s even more intriguing is his assessment on how the Internet changed things and what good marketing means now (spoiler: it’s not “let’s put our ad in front of as many people as possible”).
Apology to Adblock Plus users - and call for participation · 2009-08-02 23:31 by Wladimir Palant
I messed up, really sorry about that. Some people already noticed that Adblock Plus 1.1 release didn’t have the quality you would usually expect. Right now, it looks like there are something like three distinct regressions of which I can only reproduce one so far. And what is worse, I went on vacation only a few days after the release and didn’t have a chance to properly investigate these issues — even less to fix those. So users who are affected and can no longer use Adblock Plus can only revert to Adblock Plus 1.0.2 for now.
Adblock Plus 1.1 released · 2009-07-14 18:47 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- “Block” tab on Flash and Java is no longer permanently visible
- Diagnostics page under
chrome://adblockplus/content/errors.html - Handling of HTTP redirects
- Blocking entire domains with filters like ||example.com^
- Domain exceptions in element hiding rules
- Performance and memory use improvements