Adblock Plus and (a little) more
What is going on with Internet Explorer? · 2007-12-06 12:43 by Wladimir Palant
So now we know: the next Internet Explorer version will be called Internet Explorer 8. What a surprise. Thanks, Dean, for telling us. What we don’t know is just about everything else about Internet Explorer 8 because the IE team has been maintaining strict radio silence about it. And what we get is a bullshit answer that “the whole world relies on Internet Explorer and we must be very careful about what we say.”
Spam, Spam, Spam, lovely Spam · 2007-11-28 03:08 by Wladimir Palant
Today’s spammers always find interesting questions to ask:
Are you currently accepting advertising on your website adblockplus.org?
Predictable whitelists strike again · 2007-11-05 17:18 by Wladimir Palant
A little more than half a year ago I wrote an article on how security solutions using whitelists are better than those using blacklists. At the same time I noted that even using whitelists is not always enough — for example when your whitelist is predictable and the attacker can make sure the whitelisting rule applies to him. NoScript extension was the example I used, and its author reacted by adding “XSS protection” assuming that this would invalidate my claims.
Interview responses - a summary · 2007-09-29 01:24 by Wladimir Palant
This month Adblock Plus got some great publicity. Regardless of how this sudden interest for a niche product started and regardless of what all these articles actually said — this is very good because it makes Adblock Plus more widely known. But I spent quite some time answering interview questions and most of the time these answers didn’t get anywhere. In quite a few cases I had a strong suspicion that the reporter already knew what he was going to write before asking questions. He would then throw away any answer that didn’t fit into his scheme. I would hate to see all this time wasted, so I want to publish a summary of all that I’ve written in email answers over the month (unfortunately, I don’t have recordings of phone interviews).
Adblock Plus is most used extension · 2007-09-17 13:13 by Wladimir Palant
Justing Scott (aka fligtar, one of addons.mozilla.org developers) published interesting numbers in his blog. In addition to the (inherently unreliable) download numbers for extensions we now also have the numbers of active users to compare. Actually, they are not really user numbers, but at least Mozilla knows how often it received update requests for which extensions — and that’s good enough to compare relative usage.
How I "stole" the code that made Adblock a success · 2007-09-16 18:39 by Wladimir Palant
Just wow… I got a mail from a fellow extension developer with some corrections to the History of Adblock. He notified me that his content blocker was first to use content policies and suggested that I correct the history. I declined because the history never claims that I was first when I came up with this concept in June 2003, I was (and still am) simply unaware of already existing implementations.
Ads don't generate money · 2007-09-10 04:46 by Wladimir Palant
The Adblock discussion started by Danny Carlton’s half-hearted attempts to exert pressure on Mozilla Corporation continues. Now the “big players” entered the game, in the last few days I was contacted by reporters from NY Times, BBC World, National Public Radio, and several others. Their criticism of Adblock Plus is different — and more convincing. After all, nobody can deny that Adblock Plus is taking revenue away from content providers thus undermining the foundation of the Internet, right?
Profitability is not a right, it has to be earned · 2007-09-06 22:18 by Wladimir Palant
The first project I wanted to make money from became a failure. Yes, I got some customers, even one large company, but in the end what I earned wasn’t comparable to the effort I put into it. Who’s fault was it? Mine of course. I knew too little about how to get users interested and to sell my product, and, frankly, I didn’t even want to learn more — creating a good product was more important to me. Did I blame my customers for my failure, did I say that they should have been more interested, should have paid more? Of course not. The customers didn’t have any obligation towards me, they were free to choose, as always.
Adblock for Internet Explorer is not an option · 2007-08-29 15:59 by Wladimir Palant
I already answered that question several times but recently a few people asked me again to create an Adblock Plus version for Internet Explorer. So I thought it would be worth answering in detail in my blog. Fact is, this is not likely to happen, for various reasons.
Why Firefox is blocked · 2007-08-29 06:31 by Wladimir Palant
Do I really have to say anything about this ridiculous FUD campaign against Firefox? No, I wouldn’t have anything to add to Why Darwin Beats Danny Carlton anyway. Thank you, Michael Arrington, I couldn’t agree more.