Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Improvements to pop-up blocking in Chrome · 2013-03-05 15:51 by Wladimir Palant

Turns out that our previous release candidate wasn’t catching all the pop-ups. We’ve improved the approach in Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.3.4.919, that’s the new release candidate.

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Pop-up blocking for Chrome · 2013-03-04 12:55 by Wladimir Palant

We’ve had pop-up blocking support in Firefox for quite a while already, starting with the 1.3.4.918 development build the same functionality is now available for Chrome. Again, this is to complement the built-in pop-up blocker for the cases where it fails, not to replace it. By now the subscription authors added filters for the most notorious unwanted pop-ups so these should be blocked immediately.

This is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.4 for Google Chrome which is scheduled for release next Tuesday (2013-03-12).

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Adblock Plus 1.3.4 for Google Chrome™ released · 2012-12-18 14:26 by Wladimir Palant

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This is a bugfix release, it fixes an issue with the signature validation code in Adblock Plus. It also updates translations, our volunteers on Crowdin finished translating Adblock Plus for Chrome into twenty languages.

Version number notes: there was no 1.3.2 or 1.3.3 release for Chrome, we released Adblock Plus with these version numbers for Opera however.

Adblock Plus 1.3.1 for Google Chrome™ released · 2012-11-07 10:21 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus for Google Chrome™

Major changes

Made “Hide placeholders of blocked elements” feature work more reliably (forum topic).
Made links on the Options page open in new tab (forum topic).
A warning is displayed for people with a corrupted file storage causing the first-run page show up on each browser start (issue description).
Removed “Disable inline text ads” feature, it was almost useless and triggered a memory leak in Chrome (forum topic, forum topic).
Fixed: Ads are sometimes blocked on whitelisted pages (forum topic).
Fixed: Exception rules don’t apply to frames correctly (forum topic).
Fixed: Requests made by javascript: or data: frames aren’t blocked.
Fixed: First-run page opens twice on initial install.

Second Adblock Plus 1.3.1 for Chrome release candidate · 2012-11-06 12:43 by Wladimir Palant

Adblock Plus 1.3.0.888 for Chrome development build is the new release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.3.1 release. After the previous release candidate we again improved the way placeholder hiding works. We also found and fixed two additional issues which is why the release has been delayed until tomorrow:

“Disable inline text ads” feature causes a memory leak (forum topic, forum topic) – the underlying cause seems to be a Chrome bug but this feature is mostly useless now anyway and has been removed.
Fixed: Wrong handling of frames in the exception rules (forum topic)

This development build also includes the current translations.

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Adblock Plus 1.3.1 for Chrome release candidate available · 2012-10-30 17:46 by Wladimir Palant

We changed a lot in Adblock Plus 1.3 for Chrome and some issues weren’t discovered before the release. A new release is planned for next Tuesday, with the changes now available for testing in Adblock Plus 1.3.0.871 for Chrome development build:

Added message on the first-run page for people affected by corrupted file storage and getting this page on each browser start (forum topic)
Fixed: Image placeholders aren’t always being hidden (forum topic)
Fixed: Chrome’s caching causes Adblock Plus to block ads on whitelisted sites (forum topic)
Fixed: Ads in data: and javascript: frames aren’t being blocked (forum topic)
Fixed: First-run page opens the first two times Adblock Plus starts up after installation (forum topic)

We’ve started a new translation round because of that warning message, feel free to contribute (even if you don’t feel like translating, you could vote on the existing translation proposals).

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Adblock Plus 1.3 for Google Chrome™ released · 2012-10-27 00:38 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus for Google Chrome™

Major changes

Adblock Plus for Chrome is now officially out of beta, its functionality and stability are comparable to Adblock Plus for Firefox. The user interface is still lacking, we are working on that.
Some acceptable ads are now allowed by default (Adblock Plus for Firefox had this for almost a year already, easy to disable, see full explanation).
Added a first-run page (only shows up once for each user – either on new install or after update to Adblock Plus 1.3 from an older version).
Better performance now that we rely exclusively on the webRequest API (Chrome 17 and below are no longer supported).
Added support for element hiding exceptions.
Made use of new security features in new Google Chrome versions.
Worked around Chrome issue 49001 (some websites breaking due to our element hiding).
Fixed a data corruption bug that would sometimes corrupt the filters.
Removed sending of the Do-Not-Track header now that Chrome is capable of doing it itself.
Source code license is the GNU General Public License v3.0 instead of the Mozilla Public License now.

Major platform update for Adblock Plus/Chrome · 2012-08-28 16:27 by Wladimir Palant

Adblock Plus 1.2.0.812 for Chrome got a huge update that brought its code in line with current Adblock Plus for Firefox state as well as prepared it for upcoming Chrome changes. More changes will be implemented now (including ones that will actually be visible), in the meantime please test this build and report back if something is broken.

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Important note: Unfortunately, Chrome developers decided that extension installations from third-party websites should be complicated. Please read the Chrome installation notes on the page linked above. Yes, I feel your pain :-(

Adblock Plus 1.2 (Beta) for Google Chrome™ released · 2012-01-10 11:44 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus for Google Chrome™

Major changes

Better blocking thanks to webRequest API (requires in Chrome 17).
Changed user interface for filter subscription management (an intermediate step towards porting our Firefox user interface).
Improved “Add filter” dialog, safe from being manipulated by the web page and with filter editing.
Filter data is being stored using File System API, file format identical to Firefox.
Using the same algorithm for filter subscription updates as in Firefox (proper handling of expiration intervals, download mirrors etc).
Added support for subscribing from web pages via abp: links.
Proper handling of $third-party filter options, top-level domains like co.uk are now being considered.
No longer putting all our element hiding rules into the document’s DOM.

Tags: adblock plus chrome releases

Adblock Plus 1.2 for Chrome release candidate available · 2012-01-09 14:56 by Wladimir Palant

The current development build (Adblock Plus 1.1.4.757 for Google Chrome, the non-experimental version) is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.2. It got a bunch of changes over the last few days, mostly polishing:

Options: Fixed displayed subscription download time after a filter update.
Fixed content script functionality in Chrome 18.
Fixed: Two “Add filter” dialogs might get opened at a time, in that case the first dialog becomes dysfunctional.
Fixed third-party checks when not using webRequest API.
Removed work-around for WebKit’s image loading bug (fixed in Chrome 16).
Updated user interface translations from Adblock Plus/Firefox.
Updated to current versions of code modules from Adblock Plus/Firefox.
Updated to current jQuery and jQuery UI versions.

The bigger (and older) changes in this version:

Better blocking thanks to webRequest API (only in Chrome 17 or with the experimental builds).
Changed user interface for filter subscription management (an intermediate step towards porting our Firefox user interface).
Improved “Add filter” dialog, safe from being manipulated by the web page and with filter editing.
Filter data is being stored using File System API, file format identical to Firefox.
Using the same algorithm for filter subscription updates as in Firefox (proper handling of expiration intervals, download mirrors etc).
Proper handling of $third-party filter options, top-level domains like co.uk are now being considered.
No longer putting all our element hiding rules into the document’s DOM.

There will be a release shortly, please report any issues you notice.

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