Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Happy Birthday Adblock Plus! · 2007-01-17 07:00 by Wladimir Palant
Do you remember? The very first Adblock Plus 0.6 came out one year ago (at least if you don’t count mcm’s Adblock Plus which was a very different extension). Since then we had 18 releases and almost three million downloads on addons.mozilla.org. The support forum currently counts 249 members (mind you, registration is not mandatory) and over 1000 threads with almost 9000 posts. Altogether this site had over 1 million visits in the 7 months that it existed. That’s some numbers one doesn’t need to be ashamed of.
It all started off in December 2005 when I met rue (Adblock developer) on IRC and suggested to improve Adblock 0.5 while he can continue developing Adblock 0.6. The prototype (completely rewritten) was finished within three days — but the changes were too many for rue. During the first weeks of January I continued polishing the extension to make sure it is on par
with the previous Adblock release but doesn’t have any additional features (those were reserved for Adblock 0.6). It became more and more obvious that rue wouldn’t accept the rewrite which is why I contacted Michael McDonald to make sure I can use the Adblock Plus name. And on January 17 the project finally went live.
The ride hasn’t always been smooth. I didn’t expect Adblock Plus 0.6 to be approved on addons.mozilla.org within hours so the official announcement came much too late — in the meanwhile I was accused of being an impostor and of stealing ideas from the “good extensions”. The release has been rushed, it lacked some important functionality (some people called it “Adblock Lite”) and didn’t receive enough outside testing. And even though this changed within days (it took only four days until Adblock Plus 0.6.0.4 was released), the damage was done and it took time for the negative comments to level off.
Since then Adblock Plus has been improving incrementally. Adblock Plus 0.6.1 brought subscriptions and the first 11 translations. Adblock Plus 0.7 started counting filter hits and allowed disabling of individual filters, it also first made element hiding a powerful feature. Adblock Plus 0.7.1 streamlined filter list editing in the Preferences dialog. Finally Adblock Plus 0.7.2 brought support for a wide range of applications: Thunderbird, Songbird and K-Meleon.
Something that I didn’t quite expect is how useful the community feedback would be. It was not a coincidence that Adblock Plus 0.6 was able to make such a giant leap forward in only a few days. In other projects I rarely had any relevant comments whatsoever, with Adblock Plus I get downright bombarded with great suggestions. Many thanks, you are great, all of you! And many thanks to Michael McDonald who I inherited this great community from.
Well, it has been an interesting year. Funny enough, the last life sign from the Adblock project also was exactly a year ago. Ben Karel burned out on Adblock and nobody has heard of rue for almost a year. I guess abandoning the project was easier than turning it over to me…
Comment [10]
Commenting is closed for this article.
Mishail · 2007-01-17 08:29 · #
Wladimir,
Thanks for the great work.
chewey · 2007-01-17 13:47 · #
Wow, has it really been only one year?
I admit being a little bit sceptic at first too (although I didn’t accuse anybody of anything), mostly because I missed DIV blocking. But as soon as element hiding was introduced, you had won me over for good :-)
Additionally, you answer to messages sent to you – I never managed to get a response out of the Adblock devs.
So: Congratulations for a very successful year (hey, #1 at a.m.o!) in ABP’s long history yet to come – and thank you very much for your great work!
pirlouy · 2007-01-17 16:15 · #
I was here at the beginning ! :P
I was sure it would be a success (but not so fast), even more when I’ve seen a todo list.
One detail I haven’t forgotten, it’s a post in mozillazine (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=2026244#2026244), it seems clear that you were motivated…
One error at the beginning: the sidebar not tear-off. People were used to having a window and this sidebar led to several détractors. :-)
Adblock Plus is the better extension for Firefox. Happy birthday !
alta88 · 2007-01-17 18:36 · #
happy birthday indeed! what i find amazing is how few, really almost none, support issues it seems there are. either in this forum or mozillazine. since we know it’s not the case of no one using it (#1) then it’s simply got to be because it’s just terrifically designed. kudos and onto the next year.
(or do you have an army answering emails, wp?)
IceDogg · 2007-01-17 20:06 · #
I’ll admit to being one of the doubters early on. I was an admin on the Forums of the old adblock plus .6 and wasn’t even sure what actions I should take (if any). Was glad I ask questions and investigated rather then jumping (to much) to conclusions. And doing something stupid.
I can’t say one simple thing where I knew it was going to be great, it just happened over time. I’m one of those pessimistic people. But I can say that I have been won over for a quite a while now. Great job!! And it just continues to get better. Happy Birthday ABP (as we know it now)!
I’m with chewey, can’t believe it’s only been a year.
Congratulations Wladimir, I think you can declare this a HUGE success.. Let’s keep it going :)
ecjs · 2007-01-17 20:10 · #
Nice work.
Matt Nordhoff (Peng) · 2007-01-18 00:50 · #
Congratulations, Wladimir, and happy birthday, ABP. It’s a lot to have accomplished in one year. :) Where will ABP be by 2008?
Fox · 2007-01-18 13:48 · #
Congratulations WP, Thank you and keep up the good work.
I was stupid back then, i did make too early conclusions :)
But i’am very glad i did keep using this, this Adblock rocks.
I think blocking mms:// (0.7 release, April 08) was 1st big reason for me, and now there is more and more reasons why this is better Adblock.
So Thank you again.
rick752 · 2007-01-19 06:54 · #
I also was an early critic of the first release of ABP 0.6. But after I saw where it was going with each new release and could see the dedication and determination that Wladimir had to this project, my allegiance became a “no-brainer” ... and the rest is history.
Happy Birthday ABP ... and Happy 3 Million Wladimir :)
Josh · 2007-02-25 01:31 · #
Happy Birthday. :)