Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Usability vs. Security · 2007-03-25 01:53 by Wladimir Palant

Disclamer: This post is only about using NoScript as a security solution, not as a way to block annoyances.

It seems that me pointing out the fundamental flaw in NoScript only inspired another round of madness — that’s the only name I can find for it. Giorgio Maone has developed a solution that will effectively stop untrusted sites from injecting JavaScript through XSS holes in whitelisted sites. He is currently testing it with a development build and from what I can tell it mostly holds what it promises. Is that an achievement? Giorgio has obviously put much thought into this feature but I still have to say: no.

Frame handling rewritten - again · 2007-03-21 04:57 by Wladimir Palant

Handling of frames has been rewritten (hopefully for the last time) to be more consistent and to avoid hitting issues in Gecko like bug 345857. Also, multi-language packages for K-Meleon can now be created (note, these packages will not work properly in K-Meleon 1.02). The multi-language builds currently contain three languages: English, German and Russian.

Changes

Removed SeaMonkey sidebar customization hack
More consistent handling of frames, less likely to trigger bugs in Gecko (side effect: frame’s URL no longer disappers from the list of blockable items when frame’s location changes)
Changed appearance of object tabs to make them less intrusive (forum thread)
Fixed: EMBED elements containing images should be recognized as objects
Fixed: Object tabs require two restarts after installation to work correctly in Firefox 3.0 alphas (bug 16077)
Made compatible with K-Meleon 1.1, multi-language packages can be built now (those will not work correctly in K-Meleon 1.02)

Known issues

~~Errors appear in the Error Console when right-clicking in XUL files~~
~~Counter for element hiding not working on table cells and rows (bug 83830)~~
Header of the blockable items list not visible in fullscreen mode

Encouraging innovation · 2007-03-16 23:28 by Wladimir Palant

I had to laugh out loudly on this one. The IEBlog announces the winners of the IE Add-ons Contest. Guess who won the Grand Prize?

K-Meleon 1.1 compatibility issues fixed · 2007-03-16 16:02 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 0.7.2.4+ for K-Meleon development build (2007031614) has been uploaded. Earlier builds would not install properly in K-Meleon 1.1 (currently alpha) because this version is based on Firefox rather than SeaMonkey. These issues should be fixed now and everything should work in both K-Meleon 1.0 and K-Meleon 1.1. Please report any remaining problems.

Blacklists, whitelists, and security · 2007-03-15 04:13 by Wladimir Palant

I had a lengthy discussion with Giorgio Maone (author of the NoScript extension) about what is a security solution and what isn’t. Starting point was my statement that, while being excellent for getting rid of annoyances, neither Adblock Plus nor NoScript are really security solutions. Both have the potential, so why not?

Why "Save Page As HTML, complete" sucks · 2007-03-15 00:20 by Wladimir Palant

I read a forum question from an Opera user who was upset because Opera 9.10 now saves web pages “like IE and Firefox” – meaning saving them with all the included files. His problem was easily solved with a configuration change but it got me thinking. Generally this doesn’t seem to be such a bad idea, it allows you to open a saved web page and it will look exactly the same. So I tried to understand why this user was so upset and why I almost never use this feature myself. It seems there are three things.

Status of "immediate unblocking" feature · 2007-03-07 03:28 by Wladimir Palant

My post about finding a way to unblock items immediately when the filters change was probably too optimistic. I am finished coding the basics but I hit some problems in Gecko.

Getting back to Oslo · 2007-03-01 12:41 by Wladimir Palant

I already left Darmstadt and I am on my way back to Oslo now. The unpleasant surprise is that Germanwings no longer flies to Oslo. I have no idea why they stopped serving this direction in the middle of the season — I couldn’t find it mentioned anywhere, there are just no more flights between Cologne and Oslo (the webpages of both airports confirm this so this isn’t a glitch in Germanwings’ database). That means that I will fly from Düsseldorf with Norwegian which is slightly less convenient. But at least I will spend a few more days in Cologne.

Filterset.G - I call "bullshit" · 2007-02-13 15:01 by Wladimir Palant

I stumbled upon the Filterset.G article in Wikipedia and noticed that G recently edited it adding some “facts”. The most ridiculous one is: “There are approximately 1.5 million users of Filterset.G”. And these statistics are supposed to back it up. From the look of it G simply took the absolutely meaningless number of sites per month.

Element Hiding Helper 1.0.1 released · 2007-02-09 01:52 by Wladimir Palant

Changes

Conflict with find-as-you-type has been fixed
Brazilian Portuguese locale added
Some minor translation issues fixed