Adblock Plus and (a little) more
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 1.8.2 for Safari released · 2014-05-14 13:00 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.2 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Just before we released Adblock Plus for Safari last week, we realized a WebKit bug which made Adblock Plus block the content of every web page. However, the workaround we originally implemented only mitigated the issue. While websites weren’t rendered empty anymore, occasionally element hiding still didn’t work. The good news are that we finally identified the WebKit bug responsible, and implemented another workaround that hopefully fixes element hiding once and for all (issue 419).
We also fixed an issue with blocking YouTube video ads. This is the second time since last week that YouTube updated their website, and broke blocking of in-video ads with Adblock Plus for Safari (issue 471). But with this release all ads on YouTube are blocked again.
Adblock Plus 1.8.1 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-05-07 15:10 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.1 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.1 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.1 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Unfortunately, YouTube updated their website around the same time we released Adblock Plus for Safari yesterday, and partially broke blocking of videos ads in Safari (issue 438). But the good news are that we were quickly able to fix it, blocking all ads on YouTube again.
This release also fixes a regression with the “Block Element” context menu entry, which was broken in Chrome and Opera (issue 437). And we fixed an issue with the Dutch and Estonian translation which prevented installation from Chrome Web Store depending on selected language.
Adblock Plus for Safari out of beta · 2014-05-06 14:00 by Sebastian Noack
After three and a half months in beta we’re proud to finally release Adblock Plus for Safari.
The lack of a request blocking API was one of the largest challenges we faced while porting Adblock Plus to Safari. This also makes it impossible to block requests initiated by Flash. But we finally found a solution to block all ads, including pre-rolls and overlay ads, in all YouTube videos.
Adblock Plus 1.8 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-05-06 14:00 by Sebastian Noack
Install Adblock Plus 1.8 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)
Adblock Plus for Safari is out of beta and this is the first release where we release for Safari, Chrome and Opera simultaneously. Adblock Plus for Safari is mostly on par with Adblock Plus for Chrome and Opera. There are currently some limitations however when it comes to blocking popups, XMLHttpRequests and requests initiated by Flash. Most of these are limitations in Safari that will hopefully be addressed in future Safari versions.
We also added a notification that shows up the first time users visit websites which show obtrusive anti-adblock messages, asking them whether to block those or not. This was ported from Adblock Plus for Firefox, where we introduced it in February (issue 174).
In order to hide elements we have to inject a stylesheet into the web page. However, changing an arbitrary web page always introduces the chance to break something. So we are now using Shadow DOM if available (that’s almost all supported Chrome and Opera versions). This allows us to hide our stylesheet from the web page itself (issue 309).
Chrome 35 is now in beta and has changed quite a few things in particular for extensions. So this release includes changes to restore compatibility with Chrome 35. At the same time we have dropped support for versions older than Chrome 28. Adblock Plus already suffered from some limitations on older Chrome versions, but with recent changes it is no longer possible to support Chrome 18 to 27.
This update also contains a fix for an issue with saving the data to disk which occasionally led to all filter lists and custom filters being removed (issue 361).
Other changes
- Fixed: Wrong filter was sometimes created by “Block Element” dialog when matching elements by class.
- Fixed various issues with the emergency notification mechanism.
- The icon indicating whether Adblock Plus is enabled/disabled is correctly set on startup now.
- Collapsed elements are now hidden instead of being removed from the document, in order to prevent JavaScript issues (issue 194).
- Added high-resolution icons for Retina displays (issue 4).
- Fixed issues with unknown frames and memory leaks while keeping track of frames (issue 178).
- Fixed race condition sometimes preventing initialization on first run (issue 337).
Fixing data corruptions in Adblock Plus for Safari · 2014-03-13 09:50 by Sebastian Noack
When we ported Adblock Plus from Chrome to Safari, and realized that there was no fileSystem API, we moved to localStorage for storing filter lists. Short after it turned out that we can’t store more than about 1 MB in localStorage on Safari. So we moved to a WebSQL database for the filter lists, while sticking to localStorage for other persistent data.
After we released Adblock Plus for Safari Beta, users began to complain that settings were automatically reset. The reason therefore was that both localStorage and WebSQL data are cleared when Safari cleans up browsing data.
Then we became aware of Safari’s settings API. Safari doesn’t reset settings when clearing browsing data, nor do they seem to have a limit of size. So we will soon migrate to hidden settings for storing persistent data including filter lists.