Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Trying to get rid of "Author not verified" (or: Signing extensions with StartCom certificate) · 2009-07-07 21:47 by Wladimir Palant
Over the past few days I tried to get Adblock Plus builds signed and gave up again. Given that there is fairly little documentation on that topic, I though I would summarize my experience.
Working properly in Thunderbird again · 2009-07-07 18:24 by Wladimir Palant
This version has been tested in Thunderbird 3.0 nightly builds and seems to work fine there.
Changes
- Clearing browsing history in Firefox now clears hit statistics in Adblock Plus as well, can be disabled with the hidden
extensions.adblockplus.clearStatsOnHistoryPurgepreference (forum topic)
Known issues
“Block image” context menu item isn’t always availablePreferences: After clicking “Apply” changes to the status of a subscription are no longer displayed
Some more small improvements · 2009-07-05 11:27 by Wladimir Palant
So far 22 translations have been completed, rest still contains English strings.
Note: This build is signed. However, “Author not verified” will still be displayed due to bug 372980.
Changes
- Fixed: Focus issues when closing list of blockable items in Firefox nightly builds
Known issues
Element hiding rules and background images can disappear from list of blockable items after a whileToolbar button is dysfunctional after being added to toolbar via Customize dialog
Some memory management improvements · 2009-07-02 20:41 by Wladimir Palant
So far 12 translations have been completed, rest still contains English strings.
Changes
- Cleaned up data management code, made sure Adblock Plus doesn’t use up more memory than necessary
Known issues
Performance issues caused by new object tabs code on some pages (forum topic)
Element Hiding Helper 1.0.6 released · 2009-07-01 14:50 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- New translations: Arabic, Basque, Galician, Armenian, Kazakh, Serbian
- Updated for Adblock Plus 1.1
- Updated compatibility range for various applications
- Generated rules always use raw CSS now, “simplified” syntax is deprecated
adblockplus.org - now with SSL protection · 2009-06-26 13:47 by Wladimir Palant
I enabled SSL on adblockplus.org and easylist.adblockplus.org so that these can be accessed via a secure connection. I also checked that all pages keep you on an encrypted connection once you are there (if you get redirected from HTTPS to plain HTTP somewhere — let me know). Only known problem is the video on the main page (embedding YouTube via SSL doesn’t seem possible) and images in forum posts (these typically come from plain HTTP as well). Oh, and I am using a StartCom certificate which means that only Gecko-based browsers and Safari will recognize it (given the audience of this site, this shouldn’t be a problem).
Some last improvements to tabs on Flash · 2009-06-25 10:10 by Wladimir Palant
Update: The original development build (2009062508, source code revision eae534acf07a) calculated tab positions incorrectly and was replaced.
The improvements to “Tabs on Flash and Java” feature should be complete now. Feel free to provide feedback in the forum.
Note: Adblock Plus 1.1 is feature-complete now. No more features will be added, string freeze starts now. Some stability work still remains before the release however.
Changes
- “Block” button on plugins (e.g. Flash or Java) is only shown when the mouse is on the plugin
Showing tabs on Flash only when hovered · 2009-06-24 02:52 by Wladimir Palant
The improvements to “Tabs on Flash and Java” feature are highly experimental and still work in progress. Feel free to provide feedback in the forum.
Changes
- “Block” button on plugins (e.g. Flash or Java) is only shown when the mouse is on the plugin
- Fixed: Domain-restricted filters are applied to pages opened from disk
Known issues
- Outstanding “Tabs on Flash and Java” issues: listed in the forum
Selecting countries on a map in Firefox 3.5 · 2009-06-20 12:18 by Wladimir Palant
Since everybody is talking about Firefox 3.5 demos these days I though that I would dig up one that I created myself in November. It allows selecting areas of complex shape on an image — e.g. countries on a map. This idea didn’t end up being used for anything but somebody else might find it useful.
Ten years ago I already had to solve this problem. How do you present the user with a map and let him choose a country? Back then I ended up using Win32 API and two bitmaps — one to display to the user and a second invisible bitmap to let the application translate clicks into actual countries by checking the color corresponding to the click position. The visible bitmap was static meaning that it wasn’t possible to show the selected country on the map. But that wasn’t necessary anyway back then. And now I had to solve the same problem, this time for the Mozilla platform.
Domain exceptions now work for element hiding as well · 2009-06-15 10:00 by Wladimir Palant
This development build is almost feature complete now, further Adblock Plus 1.1 development will focus on stability rather than features. Still possible features: a context menu entry to revert “Disable this filter on example.com” and object tab improvements.
Changes
- Added support for domain exceptions in element hiding, e.g. “example.com,~foo.example.com##foo” or “~example.com##foo” (forum topic)