Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Starting string freeze for Adblock Plus 1.0 · 2008-11-04 02:18 by Wladimir Palant

Note: This is a first beta release for Adblock Plus 1.0. No major changes are expected at this point, in particular no string changes. The development focus now is on polishing the release and fixing remaining bugs.

Changes

Merged first run preferences extensions.adblockplus.checkedtoolbar, extensions.adblockplus.showsubscriptions, extensions.adblockplus.checkedadblockinstalled into an extensions.adblockplus.currentVersion preference
Filter subscription dialog on first run now opens in a new tab (bug 15786)
Removed Adblock warning as a separate question, made filter subscription dialog warn if Adblock is installed and suggest automatic uninstall
Preferences: using more obvious images for the “Enabled” column (forum topic, forum topic)
Added “Adblock Plus: Blockable Items” to the View menu in Firefox (View – Toolbars menu in SeaMonkey)
Renamed Tools menu item into “Adblock Plus Preferences”

Known issues

~~Filterset.G warning doesn’t pop up after upgrade from Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5~~
~~Whitelisting rules apply to entire pages by default, even the ones not starting with “http://”~~
~~Blockable items: sorting by “State” column takes precedence over user’s chosen sort order~~
Subscription dialog on first start doesn’t play nice with session restore
Styling broken in SeaMonkey

Filterset.G warning added · 2008-11-01 14:36 by Wladimir Palant

Changes

Made filter subscription dialog warn if Filterset.G is installed and suggest automatic uninstall
Subscription dialog on first start shows up even if other extensions already added a filter subscription, only existing downloadable filter subscriptions disable the dialog
Blockable items: Added “Size” column (hidden by default)
Blockable items: Added element size to the tooltip
Blockable items: Sort by “State” column by default (blocked items first)
Preferences: Made new “View” menu the context menu for list header
Preferences: Changed names for groups of user-defined filters (forum topic)
About Adblock Plus: Made homepage link localizable (and different for German/French locales, bug 17136)

Known issues

~~Preferences: Hit count and Last hit columns are not right-aligned~~
~~A choice to make a column visible doesn’t always persist~~
~~Double-clicking a group title starts editing a new filter/filter subscription~~
~~Bug 462504 will lead to data loss if JIT is turned on for chrome (affects browser nightly builds 20081028 and later)~~
Filterset.G warning doesn’t pop up after upgrade from Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
Whitelisting rules apply to entire pages by default, even the ones not starting with “http://”
Blockable items: sorting by “State” column takes precedence over user’s chosen sort order

Checksum validation for subscription downloads added · 2008-10-30 10:19 by Wladimir Palant

Changes

For subscription downloads, a comment “! Checksum: abcd” is now interpreted and files with wrong checksum are rejected (forum topic, reference implementation to add checksums)
Preferences: Filter export inserts a checksum comment into the file (forum topic)
Preferences: For invalid filters, the tooltip now explains why they are invalid
Preferences: Added a way to disable/enable filters and subscriptions from context menu

Known issues

~~Preferences: Tooltip is being shown when hovering empty space~~
~~Preferences: No tooltip on overflowing cell text~~
~~Preferences: “Delete” context menu items isn’t enabled for filter subscriptions~~
~~Subscription download fails if the download location isn’t HTTP~~
~~Last line of patterns.ini isn’t read correctly when the browser starts~~
~~Filters in a newly added subscription are still being marked as “too short”~~
~~Filters of a disabled subscription show up as “too short” after restart~~
~~“Collapse blocked elements” option has no effect~~
A choice to make a column visible doesn’t always persist
Double-clicking a group title starts editing a new filter/filter subscription
Bug 462504 will lead to data loss if JIT is turned on for chrome (affects browser nightly builds 20081028 and later)

EasyList downloads moved to MozDev · 2008-10-29 14:01 by Wladimir Palant

EasyList has been doing great lately, its user base is constantly growing. The downside of this — tens of millions of download requests arriving at easylist.adblockplus.org each month, amounting to hundreds of gigabytes in traffic. And while the server can easily handle these requests, the bandwidth use of my account is dangerously approaching the limit. Yes, a merely 8 kB small file can do that to you if downloaded sufficiently often.

Fixing the obvious bugs · 2008-10-28 21:22 by Wladimir Palant

Warning: Format of patterns.ini file changed in a way that is not backwards compatible. If you want to go back to an older version of Adblock Plus, keep a backup or you will loose all your filters.

Note: Due to extensive redesign, bugs are expected, especially around the Preferences dialog. Please report the issues you find.

Known issues

~~Elements matching whitelist filters are still blocked and collapsed~~
~~Toolbar icon tooltip counts whitelisted elements as blocked~~
~~When filters are reapplied after a new filter is added, whitelisted elements are ignored~~
~~Enabling/disabling filters in Preferences dialog is only respected after a browser restart~~
Preferences: Tooltip is being shown when hovering empty space
Preferences: No tooltip on overflowing cell text
Preferences: “Delete” context menu items isn’t enabled for filter subscriptions
Subscription download fails if the download location isn’t HTTP
Last line of patterns.ini isn’t read correctly when the browser starts
Filters in a newly added subscription are still being marked as “too short”
Filters of a disabled subscription show up as “too short” after restart
“Collapse blocked elements” option has no effect

Core classes redesign complete · 2008-10-28 17:45 by Wladimir Palant

Note: Due to extensive redesign, bugs are expected, especially around the Preferences dialog. Please report the issues you find.

Changes

Blockable items: Filters can now be disabled and re-enabled from the context menu
Firefox 1.5, Thunderbird 1.5, SeaMonkey 1.0, Songbird 0.5/0.6 are no longer supported
Flock 1.2 and Songbird 0.7 are supported now
Redesigned core classes for better maintainability, added code documentation and tests for large parts of the core
Changed patterns.ini format to allow user-defined filters to be stored in any filter group
Adblock Plus 0.6 preferences are no longer imported on upgrade
Adblock preferences are no longer imported on upgrade (filter list still imported)
Preferences: eliminated delay when Preferences window is opened and much of the delay when changes are applied
Preferences: Added View menu to control visible columns and sorting, removed column picker
Fixed: “Edit filter in effect” might select the filter in a disabled subscription even though it exists in an enabled one
Preferences: Groups containing user-defined filters can now be disabled as well”
Preferences: Removed “Add filter” dummy from the list
Preferences: Comments can now be inserted in all filter groups, not only “Advertisement filters”

Known issues

Comments cannot be moved between filter groups
~~After first download of the subscription all filters are marked as “too short”~~
~~Songbird: Links opened by Adblock Plus open in the default browser~~

Fake "hg rebase" implementation · 2008-10-24 11:13 by Wladimir Palant

After doing two merges in Mercurial when I couldn’t push my changes due to totally unrelated changes in the remote repository, I noticed that mq works great but having a fully automated solution instead of running several commands manually would be desirable.

Adblock Plus goes Mercurial · 2008-10-23 14:58 by Wladimir Palant

After all the bigger projects already announced their move from CVS to Mercurial, it is now my turn. A Mercurial code repository for Adblock Plus was created at MozDev yesterday (thanks to Doug for the fast response), and now I am done updating the scripts and instructions on the web.

Generating JavaScript documentation · 2008-10-21 10:05 by Wladimir Palant

After years of neglecting code documentation I finally came around and added JSDoc comments to much of the Adblock Plus core. The next problem now — what tool should I use to extract these comments and generate documentation? Problem is, none of the off-the-shelf tools know JavaScript 1.8.

Dealing with source code in Mercurial · 2008-10-20 13:00 by Wladimir Palant

Dear Lazyweb,

I like it a lot that checking out XULRunner code is a simple hg clone command now rather than a special checkout script — but how do you check out the source code of a specific release?