Adblock Plus and (a little) more
And we proudly present: The Deregifier! · 2006-08-23 00:26 by Wladimir Palant
After years of regexp mania we now have to go back to simple filters — starting with Adblock Plus 0.7 those are more efficient than regular expressions. This doesn’t mean that regular expressions got any slower, it’s that simple filters got very fast. There are also other advantages a dozen simple filters have over one long regexp. They are simply easier to read, “effective filter” in the blockable items tooltips presents more relevant information (one rule instead of the whole regexp), we get hit counts for every filter that is also more relevant, and we can deativate every simple filter separately if it causes problems.
Investigating filter matching algorithms · 2006-08-22 20:02 by Wladimir Palant
Warning: dense computer science talk ahead. Proceed at your own risk!
This is the story behind improving the performance of Adblock’s most important component — filter matching. The problem is the following: we have a set F consisting of f filters, we have a string (an address) S of length n, and we need to know whether this string matches any of the filters. If it does, we need to block the element associated with this address. And we should decide really soon because there are a few hundred more of those addresses to be tested and the user is waiting impatiently.
Speaking of respecting users... · 2006-08-20 23:36 by Wladimir Palant
When you go to Adblock’s (not Adblock Plus) web site — what strikes you most? Is it MozDev’s cool design? Or is it the great description of things you can do with Adblock? I bet that’s not what you notice. I am almost sure that you stare at the text and swear: “Who the hell put grey text on white background? How are we supposed to read this?”
New web tools for Adblock Plus · 2006-08-20 01:27 by Wladimir Palant
I opened a new web site section called Web tools where I put the three web-based tools for Adblock Plus users I wrote recently.
Documentation for Yahoo Mail crashes · 2006-08-15 23:16 by Wladimir Palant
People still complain frequently that their browser crashes on Yahoo Mail so I thought sending them to a (not very clearly formulated) forum post wouldn’t be the best thing to do. I wrote some text describing the problem and how it can be solved.
Some impressive statistics [updated] · 2006-08-07 20:33 by Wladimir Palant
I looked at the site statistics for the first time since adblockplus.org went live. The traffic in July exceeded my expectations by far and makes me already worry about the traffic limit. We got 2 million page requests which translates into 130 thousands visitors — more than 4 thousands every day.
Could Adblock be built into the browser? · 2006-08-07 16:10 by Wladimir Palant
Daniel Goldman from Opera Watch wrote Why Opera wouldn’t include an AdBlock feature in the browser claiming that no browser vendor would ever include ad blocking functionality in their core browser. This claim looks a little strange given that Opera already added ad blocking functionality with the release of Opera 9. Also, ad blocking has been a built-in feature of Mozilla Suite and Firefox virtually forever even though it isn’t as powerful as Adblock (images can be blocked by domain).
"Don't mail us unless you are in the US" · 2006-08-06 21:23 by Wladimir Palant
I am back from my vacation and working through all the mail I got in the two weeks. Amongst others I found a funny email bounce for the forum’s confirmation message: “We are not aware of anyone in Germany needing to email us”.
Leaving for vacation · 2006-07-18 18:50 by Wladimir Palant
I am leaving for a vacation tomorrow, going to Lvov (Ukraine) with my girlfriend. So if I’m not answering mails — don’t be surprised. You shouldn’t expect an answer from me before the 7th of August, I’ll probably not be online during the whole vacation.
Ethics of blocking ads · 2006-06-27 04:55 by Wladimir Palant
I found one of the better blog posts on the topic of ethical implications of ad blocking today. Being on the pro-adblock side of the discussion, it doesn’t fall for the usual “I don’t care how they earn their money” kind of argument.