Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Status update: 2010-11-19 · 2010-11-26 16:35 by Wladimir Palant

Done

Added a way to change status of a issue reports, with an optional notification sent out to the user.
Improved sorting of report columns.
More discussions on issue reporter improvements.

In progress

Refactoring of Python scripts used on adblockplus.org to make them easier to change and maintain.

Status update: 2010-11-14 · 2010-11-26 16:21 by Wladimir Palant

Worked 4 days on Adblock Plus this week.

Done

Subscription authors are now getting notifications about new issue reports, choosing between daily and weekly digests is also possible.
Added sorting functionality to report columns.
Implemented a bunch of improvements to the digest emails to allow spotting “good” reports more easily.
Discussed a bunch of other improvement proposals for issue reports.
Looked into issues that people using icon with text are experiencing – found an undocumented solution, let’s hope that it won’t break with the next Firefox release.
Fixed toolbar icon in SeaMonkey Mail nightlies (nobody reported this issue, I guess nobody noticed?).

Comments are now automatically disabled after 6 weeks · 2010-11-24 15:42 by Wladimir Palant

For a long time the policy for this blog was: comments are always welcome. However, I noticed that there are some discussions going on in several years old blog posts that I am not really following any more. And I started thinking: what was the last time that a genuinely useful comment was received on an older blog post? I mean, a comment that wasn’t spam, off-topic, rehashing of arguments that have been mentioned years ago, something that would be better off in the forum. And I don’t remember when this happened the last time. Typically, all the useful comments arrive in the first few weeks after the article is posted and after that it’s only stuff that nobody will ever read (not even me). So: sorry, comments will now be automatically disabled on blog posts that are older than 6 weeks. If somebody stumbles upon my blog by following a random link, he/she is probably better off creating a forum post rather than commenting in the blog.

Newsletter for subscription authors #1: Adblock Plus 1.3 and beyond · 2010-11-09 17:16 by Wladimir Palant

This mail provides important information for filter subscription authors about Adblock Plus 1.3, changes expected in Adblock Plus 1.4 release and Firefox 4.

Status update: 2010-11-05 · 2010-11-05 21:12 by Wladimir Palant

Worked 4 days on Adblock Plus this week. The releases on Tuesday/Wednesday were very stressful, so I am slowing down.

Done

Adblock Plus 1.3/1.3.1, Element Hiding Helper 1.1, Diagnostics 1.1.3 released
Fixed a few minor issues reported for these releases, nothing critical so far
Created an extension to generate Adblock Plus screenshots, used it to update screenshots/“translate” them to more languages
Caught up with forum/email again, somewhat

Expected server downtime · 2010-11-05 14:02 by Wladimir Palant

The server will be unreachable for some time later today. This is necessary to move adblockplus.org to a more powerful server which should hopefully resolve the connectivity issues lately. Everything should be done within 30 minutes. However, it might happen that the IP address of the server changes — in this case it will take a while until everybody can reach the server again (due to DNS caching).

Status update: 2010-10-30 · 2010-10-31 10:04 by Wladimir Palant

Done

Major update to Element Hiding Helper code and architecture
Added Shift+Mousewheel handling to Element Hiding Helper, also lock/unlock command
Finalized Element Hiding Helper strings, translations started
A little eye candy for Element Hiding Helper — better styling for hotkey labels
Release candidates for Adblock Plus 1.3, Element Hiding Helper 1.1 and Diagnostics 1.1.3 are done (the latter has no real changes, turned out none were necessary)
Russian translation for Adblock Plus, Russian and German translations for Element Hiding Helper (with some help from forum.mozilla-russia.org users)
Coordinated translations on Babelzilla, made sure the released locales are free of errors (way too many translations still unfinished however)
Dropped Indonesian, Malay and Brasilian Portuguese locales from this Adblock Plus release, these weren’t even updated for Adblock Plus 1.2

Dropping support for Firefox 3.0 · 2010-10-25 14:37 by Wladimir Palant

Adblock Plus 1.3 will be using a simpler and faster module to manage preferences. This module isn’t in Adblock Plus development builds yet but it is already used in the latest Element Hiding Helper build. As it turned out, this module isn’t working properly in Firefox 3.0 due to some JavaScript engine bug. It’s not clear which bug it is and whether it has a simple work-around. Frankly, I am not very inclined to spend time researching historical bugs in Bugzilla. Instead, Adblock Plus 1.3 and Element Hiding Helper 1.1 will no longer support Firefox 3.0. Anybody still using Firefox 3.0 should be reminded that Mozilla ended support for Firefox 3.0 in March 2010, and by now it has a large number of known and unpatched security issues — using it to browse the web is not safe. I highly recommend updating to the latest Firefox release (currently Firefox 3.6).

Status update: 2010-10-22 · 2010-10-23 12:56 by Wladimir Palant

Done

Issue reporter client-side implementation
Started beta phase for Adblock Plus
Finalized Adblock Plus strings, translators started working
Added third/first party indicator to document source column in blockable items
Changed build system to centralize extension metadata in one file (particularly to allow generating homepage links for available languages automatically)
Updated German translation (thanks to MonztA for proofreading)
Rearchitectured Element Hiding Helper, made it more like Adblock Plus
Changed configuration of Element Hiding Helper hotkeys to allow specifying multiple hotkeys (Ctrl-Shift-S is now used if Ctrl-Shift-K is taken)
A few minor changes to Element Hiding Helper filter composer

Status Update: 2010-10-15 · 2010-10-18 13:06 by Wladimir Palant

Done

First draft of a privacy policy page is under discussion
Some issue reporter polishing (particularly handling of transmission errors)
Tons of Firefox 4 work after JavaScript compartments landing — filed bugs on three issues, fixed an issue in Adblock Plus, worked around another issue affecting Element Hiding Helper
New icon to indicate slow filters (a developer doing graphical design — it’s an admirable attempt, you must give me that at least)

In progress

Handling of special cases in issue reporter (e.g. users without filter subscriptions)