Adblock Plus and (a little) more
First-run page rearchitecturing complete · 2015-01-08 13:39 by Wladimir Palant
Ever since the Firefox nightly builds switched on E10S (multi-process) the Adblock Plus first-run page was broken. We noticed the issue mid-December last year and were working on a solution since then. The result was a completely different backend for the first-run page, one that will hopefully be used for the other pieces of the user interface as well soon (no urgency there however). The new first-run page in Adblock Plus 2.6.6.3884 for Firefox and Adblock Plus 1.8.9.1299 for Chrome, Opera and Safari should hopefully look and behave exactly the same as the old one. It should however be functional in the current Firefox nightlies with E10S switched on and perform better in Safari.
If you want to test the first-run page without reinstalling, you can copy chrome://adblockplus/content/ui/firstRun.html into the address bar in Firefox or chrome-extension://ldcecbkkoecffmfljeihcmifjjdoepkn/firstRun.html in Chrome and Opera.
Adblock Plus 1.8.9 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2015-01-06 20:00 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.9 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.9 for Opera
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.9 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Changes
- Worked around some circumvention attempts.
- Fixed: Extension pages didn’t respect direction of right-to-left languages (issue 1668).
- Fixed an issue when generating filters based on the style attribute (issue 1658).
- Fixed an issue where “Block element” from the context menu didn’t work or in an inferior way than from the popup (issue 1611).
- When blocking elements suggest filters based on all URLs associated with the element (issue 1601).
- Removed ‘Hide placeholders of blocked elements’ option from the user interface (issue 1671).
- Updated the extension description (issue 1643).
Chrome/Opera-only changes
- Worked around a Chrome bug that caused placeholders for blocked elements to show up on some pages (issue 1703).
Safari-only changes
- Fixed:
<input type=image>elements were not recognized as images (issue 1644). - Fixed: Spanish (Spain) translations were used instead of Spanish (Latin America) (issue 1666).
- Fixed: Popup did not respond when multiple tabs were opened simultaneously (issue 1694).
Removed "Hide placeholders of blocked elements" option · 2014-12-11 15:49 by Sebastian Noack
Disabling the “Hide placeholders of blocked elements” option in the menu (Firefox) or in the “General” section of the options page (Chrome, Opera, Safari) had the effect that placeholders were shown for elements which didn’t load because of Adblock Plus. The purpose of this feature was to see when something was blocked on a webpage. However, the results couldn’t be relied on because it didn’t have any effect on hidden or generally invisible elements. Also, in Chrome, Opera and Safari there is now the icon badge indicating the number of blocked requests (coming to Firefox as well soon). Therefore, we decided to remove the option from the user interface.
Adblock Plus 1.8.8 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-12-02 19:32 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.8 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.8 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.8 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Changes
- Added validation of custom filters, preventing users from adding filters that break element hiding (issue 491).
- Fixed an issue where elements, which use a special URL and therefore aren’t blocked, are collapsed (issue 1613).
- Improved and fixed some issues with the “Block element” dialog.
- Consider the
styleattribute as last resort, if otherwise no filter can be generated for the given element (issue 700). - Generate element hiding filters instead of request blocking filters for elements using special URLs which can’t be blocked (issue 705).
- Use vertical scrollbars instead of wrapping long filter texts (issue 731).
- Fixed an issue where popup state wasn’t reset after closing the dialog (issue 1122).
- Fixed an error which prevented dragging the dialog to another position (issue 1516).
- Fixed insufficient escaping of CSS selectors, which broke some generated element hiding filters (issue 1527 and 1587).
- Mitigated side-effects on pages that respond to events of selected elements (issue 1603).
- Fixed: Overlays are injected for hidden elements (issue 1606).
- Fixed wrong
z-indexof injected overlays (issue 1607). - Fixed an error caused by generating only a request blocking filter for an
<object>element (issue 1609). - Keep highlighting all selected elements until the dialog is closed (issue 1610).
- Fixed an issue where some elements weren’t removed immediately when the filter is saved (issue 1612).
- Consider the
Chrome/Opera-only changes
- Adapted workaround for Chrome bug causing some issues with Flash videos, for Chrome 40, Opera 27 and above (issue 1593).
- Fixed: Options page isn’t opened correctly from an incognito window (issue 1268).
Safari-only changes
- Fixed: Blocked frames aren’t collapsed (issue 1592).
- Improved performance, by caching translations (issue 1502).
Adblock Plus 1.8.7 for Chrome and Opera released · 2014-10-28 18:06 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.7 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.7 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
This release only fixes an issue breaking Flash videos on Chrome 39 and Opera 26 (issue 1496). We initially addressed that issue only for Chrome 38 and Opera 25, assuming that Google fixes the Chrome bug that is causing this issue, before Chrome 39 is released. However, they didn’t yet, and it is rather unlikely that they will still fix it for Chrome 39, which is in beta now.
Note: We also released Adblock Plus 1.8.7 for Safari but there are no changes there compared to Adblock Plus 1.8.6.
Adblock Plus 1.8.6 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-10-15 00:10 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.6 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.6 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.6 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Changes
- Removed special handling for
$sitekeyfilter option, handling them the same as the$domainoption (issue 433). - Generate protocol-agnostic filters when using the “Block element” dialog (issue 704).
- Fixed an issue with escaping URLs in filters generated by the “Block element” dialog (issue 1393).
- Fixed an issue causing infinite recursion when blocking
<input type=image>elements (issue 1396). - Disable “Block element” option on XML pages, where it doesn’t work anyway (issue 1428).
Chrome/Opera-only changes
- Implemented a workaround for a bug in Chrome 38 and Opera 25, which broke some Flash videos (issue 1372).
- Removed side-effects introduced by the “Block element” dialog if websites change styles of highlighted elements (issue 1325).
Adblock Plus 1.8.5 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-09-08 14:15 by Wladimir Palant
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.5 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.5 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.5 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Due to a mistake on our end, a few changes that were announced for the previous release didn’t actually make it into the builds. This is being corrected now.
Changes
- Fixed: “Block Element” dialog was sometimes covered up by other page elements (issue 703).
- Fixed: Checkbox labels on the options page should be clickable (issue 1226).
Chrome/Opera-only changes
- Adapted for changes in Chrome 36, Opera 23 and higher. Removed side-effects of element hiding on affected websites (e.g. Outlook 365) again (issue 1290).
Adblock Plus 1.8.4 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-09-03 20:10 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.4 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.4 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.4 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Note: Some changes announced here didn’t actually make it into the build, these are part of Adblock Plus 1.8.5.
Changes
Fixed: “Block Element” dialog was sometimes covered up by other page elements (issue 703).
Chrome/Opera-only changes
- Fixed element hiding and collapsing within inline frames on Chrome 36, Opera 23, and earlier (issue 581).
- Fixed an issue where pages using an XSLT template were rendered blank (issue 673).
- Made sure that bad filters cannot break extension pages (issue 926).
Adapted for changes in Chrome 36, Opera 23 and higher. Removed side-effects of element hiding on affected websites (e.g. Outlook 365) again (issue 1290).
Safari-only changes
- Block in-video ads on YouTube when using the HTML5 player as well (issue 1258).
- Worked around a JavaScript misoptimization bug in Safari 8 (issue 1273).
- Fixed an issue which broke some websites when using EasyPrivacy (issue 649).
- Improved performance when using many tabs (issue 654).
Adblock Plus 1.8.3 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-06-03 17:45 by Thomas Greiner
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.3 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.3 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.3 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Issues like filters being removed on Chrome and settings being reset on Safari led to Adblock Plus not blocking any ads for some users. Starting with this release, the default filter lists will automatically be restored when no filter lists are configured (issue 417). Users who are affected by this will be shown a message and should check their filter list settings.
Chrome/Opera-only changes
- Worked around two bugs in Chrome when using Shadow DOM (issue 450 and issue 498).
- Fixed an issue with blocking ads in situations where we don’t know the top level frame (issue 451).
- Enabled element hiding and collapsing inside inline frames on Chrome 37. A solution for older versions of Chrome and Opera still needs to be implemented (issue 581).
Safari-only changes
- Fixed blocking of elements embedded with a relative URL (issue 573).
Adblock Plus for Chrome development builds are now in Chrome Web Store · 2014-05-07 18:16 by Wladimir Palant
We implemented automatic upload of the Adblock Plus for Chrome development builds to Chrome Web Store which will become the primary source of the development builds now.