Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus 1.9.4 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2015-11-24 13:05 by Dave Vandyke

Install Adblock Plus 1.9.4 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.9.4 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.9.4 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

This update contains the new $generichide and $genericblock filter options and some bug fixes.

Changes

Fixed: Anti-Adblock warning was being triggered by frames in some cases (issue 3238).
Fixed: Key-based whitelisting was ignored for element collapsing (issue 3170).
Fixed how the “Block element” feature deals with attributes containing null character (issue 3163).
Added support for new $generichide and $genericblock filter options (issue 616, issue 647).
Improved first-run page display on small screens (issue 2018).

New filter options $generichide and $genericblock · 2015-11-17 12:18 by Dave Vandyke

We have added two new filter options, $generichide and $genericblock which are already available in development builds and will be included in Adblock Plus 2.6.12 for Firefox and 1.9.4 for Chrome, Opera & Safari. They allow exception rules to be written that disable generic hiding or blocking rules for a given website whilst leaving site-specific rules intact.

This is an experimental feature that is still subject to change.

Some websites detect Adblock Plus by testing whether a certain generic rule is in effect. For example, if a file called “ads.js” isn’t loaded they might guess that the client is blocking adverts. The new options have been added to give filter authors more power to combat this, they provide a simple way to disable all generic rules for any websites that are found to be using this technique.

Here is an example rule that will disable generic hiding rules for the website adblockplus.org: @@||adblockplus.org^$generichide.

What counts as a generic rule? Currently, we define a generic rule as one that either applies to all domains, or all domains with a few exceptions. As long as a filter contains at least one domain or sitekey to match we consider it to be specific.
(Note that by this definition the blocking rule ||example.com^ is generic whereas */ads/*$domain=example.com is site-specific.)

Support for other platforms such as Internet Explorer is still in progress.

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Adblock Plus 1.9.3 for Chrome, Opera and Safari release · 2015-09-22 17:23 by Thomas Greiner

Install Adblock Plus 1.9.3 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.9.3 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.9.3 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

This update contains mostly improvements to notifications based on feedback from previous tests.

Changes

Added new notification type for normal messages (issue 3022).
Decreased interval between icon animations (issue 3054).
Decreased delay for initial filter download (issue 284).
Added promotional message for Adblock Browser to the first-run page (issue 3031).

Chrome-only changes

Added opt-out button to Chrome desktop notifications (issue 3024).

Adblock Plus 1.9.1 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2015-07-14 17:41 by Thomas Greiner

Install Adblock Plus 1.9.1 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.9.1 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.9.1 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Changes

Added global opt-out for notifications (issue 2195).
Immediately show notifications after they were downloaded (issue 2419).
Reduced delay of initial download of notifications (issue 2659).
Fixed: Notification data was reset when pages load during extension intitialization (issue 2757).

Adblock Plus 1.9 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2015-06-16 14:30 by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 1.9 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.9 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.9 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Changes

Fixed: Placeholders weren’t hidden for elements that were blocked by an URL given in the srcset attribute (issue 2634).
Exception rules with protocol don’t imply the $document flag anymore (issue 2503).
Changed the label for the share buttons to reflect the functionality more accurately (issue 2202).
Implemented an alternative format for subscription links (issue 2212).
Fixed some issues with the “Block element” dialog:
- Fixed some issues with element highlighting (issue 2077, issue 2209).
- Fixed some issues with dragging the dialog (issue 2100, issue 2173, issue 2194).
- Fixed issues with how the context menu interacted with other parts of the user interface (issue 2279, issue 2298).
- The page no longer freezes when selecting an element that would result in a lot of other elements being blocked as well (issue 2215).
Performance improvements:
- Mitigated the effect of slow request blocking filters (issue 2177).
- Determine whether a page or frame is whitelisted more efficiently by only matching exception rules (issue 2132).
- Moved code not crucial to blocking requests out of the critical path, decreasing load times (issue 2505).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Changed the way Adblock Plus stores persistent data such as setting and filter lists, replacing localStorage and the deprecated FileSystem API with chrome.storage (issue 2021, issue 2040).
Run content scripts in anonymous frames again, in order to block ads more reliably (issue 2216, issue 2217).
Worked around a Chromium bug that caused corruption of the page layout when using the feedback dialog on Google Mail and other Google websites (issue 2602).
Fixed element hiding filters using CSS selectors with commas inside quoted text (issue 2467).
Don’t assume Chromium-specific user agent string, fixing issues when using --user-agent switch, or running on a different platform (issue 2537).
Performance improvements:
- Flush caches after filter changes only when absolutely necessary and respect the browser’s quotas (issue 2034, issue 2297).
- Improved the performance of CSS selector injection, slightly decreasing page load time, in particular on pages with many frames and/or many active element hiding filters (issue 2528).
- Avoid calling into JavaScript when processing headers when loading other resources than documents and frames (issue 2538).
- Got rid of some try..catch statements which prevent functions from being optimized (issue 2658, issue 2569).
- Avoid iteration over a hash-table which prevents functions from being optimized, slightly improving performance of element hiding filter matching (issue 2582).

Chrome-only changes

Added a pre-configurable preference to suppress the first run page (issue 1488).

Opera-only changes

Fixed: Spanish translation wasn’t being used (issue 2665).

Safari-only changes

Restored compatibility with Safari 6 (issue 2172).

Suppressing the first-run page on Chrome · 2015-04-20 17:18 by Sebastian Noack

We’ve been asked by system administrators who want to deploy Adblock Plus on their network for a way to disable the first-run page.

This is now possible with Adblock Plus for Chrome. The current Adblock Plus development build, 1.8.12.1419, and the upcoming release, 1.9, can be configured by extension policies to suppress the first-run page.

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Adblock Plus 1.8.12 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2015-03-10 20:41 by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 1.8.12 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.12 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.12 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Changes

Fixed: Trailing question marks in URLs were ignored, which caused issues with some video websites (issue 2026).
Fixed some inconsistencies with the new icon and improved support for high resolution displays (issue 2049, issue 2050, issue 2052 and issue 2053).
Improved behavior of ‘Block element’ dialog (issue 370, issue 1282, issue 1853, issue 2076 and issue 2081).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Fixed: Placeholders for blocked elements showed up in dynamically created frames (issue 2084).

Opera-only changes

Fixed: Opening the options page from the icon popup didn’t work when the option page was already open in a different tab (issue 2079).

Safari-only changes

OBJECT, MEDIA and OTHER requests are distinguished now (issue 2064).
Fixed: Tabs opened before loading the extension weren’t recognized (issue 2082).

Changing “Block element” dialog behavior on Chrome, Opera and Safari · 2015-03-05 12:11 by Sebastian Noack

We’ve just fixed some conceptual issues with the “Block element” functionality in Adblock Plus as available from the icon menu and the context menu on Chrome, Opera and Safari. This feature lets you select an element on the current page and generate filters to block it.

These changes are now visible in the development builds as of Adblock Plus 1.8.11.1386, and will be included in the upcoming release of Adblock Plus 1.8.12, planned for next Tuesday on March 10, 2015.

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Adblock Plus 1.8.11 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2015-02-24 17:17 by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 1.8.11 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.11 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.11 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Changes

Improved the icon and logo (issue 1535 and issue 1989).
Fixed: Filters with internationalized domains didn’t match (issue 1801).
Fixed: On the options page, input was submitted even if the wrong button was pressed (issue 1448).
Fixed some issues with the “Block element” dialog.
- Fixed: Overlays were sometimes covered by other elements (issue 1857).
- Fixed: Matching elements weren’t highlighted sometimes (issue 1864).
- Fixed: Mouse events handled by the page could prevent the dialog from showing up (issue 1665).
- Fixed: Dialog wasn’t completely visible when selecting elements inside small frames (issue 350).
- Fixed several issues related to framesets (issue 1867, issue 1870 and issue 1082).
- Fixed issues caused by selecting SVG elements (issue 1856).
- Fixed: Images weren’t recognized when using image maps (issue 1868).
- Fixed a memory leak when routing messages across frames (issue 1840).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Fixed: Icon and badge didn’t update for pre-rendered tabs (issue 1976).
Fixed issue with third-party pages loaded in anonymous frames (issue 1977).
Fixed: CSS selectors containing commas partially broke element hiding (issue 1802).
Fixed: “Block element” dialog and highlighted elements were staying visible after the extension is unloaded (issue 1843).

Safari-only changes

Fixed an issue that broke the user interface for some languages (issue 2008).

Adblock Plus 1.8.10 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2015-01-20 18:30 by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 1.8.10 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.10 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.10 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Changes

Fixed: “Block element” didn’t highlight some elements correctly (issue 1751 and issue 1755).
Fixed: “Block element” didn’t work while the first run page was open (issue 1741).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Worked around an issue that broke printing of spreadsheets on Google Docs (issue 1770).
Adapted for a new API feature introduced in Chrome 41 and Opera 28, that allows to identify frames more efficiently and reliably (issue 1739).

Safari-only changes

Fixed a potential memory leak in the messaging code (issue 1724).