Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Malvertising: The problem, and the very obvious solution. · 2018-03-27 15:00 by Tom Woolford

Simple virus checking isn’t enough. Viruses can now hide in ads, and you may not know until it’s too late!

Adblock Plus development builds for Firefox moved to new location · 2018-03-24 16:30 by Sebastian Noack

Mozilla is going to drop support for beta versions from AMO, which means we’ll need to go back to distributing the development builds of Adblock Plus for Firefox ourselves. Furthermore, Mozilla will force existing beta users to be automatically updated to the stable version. So if you want to keep using the development build of Adblock Plus for Firefox you’ll need to re-install it from it’s new location.

Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, Your Data and You · 2018-03-22 14:50 by Tom Woolford

Adblock Plus discusses the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and what you should do to keep your data safe.

Adblock Plus 3.0.2 for Firefox released · 2017-12-12 10:42 by Dave Vandyke

Install Adblock Plus 3.0.2 for Firefox

This release features a number of bug fixes, some of which work around limitations of Firefox’s new Web Extensions API. Additionally, there are some minor improvements to the options page, aiming to address some of the feedback from both our users and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Changes

Fixed the “Block element” tool for Windows users (issues 6053 and 5817, corresponding to Firefox bugs 1418394 and 1418655 respectively).
Fixed blocking of WebRTC connections on websites using CSP security mechanism, works in Firefox 58 and higher now (issue 5953, Firefox bug 1406278).
Made sure that filter list downloads and other requests performed by the extension cannot be blocked (issue 6010).
Fixed subscription link handling for Windows users (issue 5965).
Fixed a bug which caused the mobile options page to be zoomed incorrectly (issue 6046).
Fixed a bug which caused the desktop popup window to open instead of the mobile options page with Firefox 57 for Android and higher (issue 5977).
Improved our Developer Tools panel, fixing a bug which prevented viewing the requested resource (issue 6035) and improving the quality of the icon (issue 6036).
Improved the layout of the options page (issue 5872), fixed the page title (issue 5972) and added a warning for users who subscribe to both the Easy Privacy and Acceptable Ads filter lists (issue 6031).
Firefox 50 is no longer supported, the options page is essentially broken there without a way to fix it (issue 5971, Firefox bug 1209869).

Known issues

Adblock Plus extension might disappear completely, only to be fixed by restarting the browser (Firefox bug 1420145).
In Firefox 57 on Windows, filtering by type in the Developer Tools panel isn’t possible (issue 5988, Firefox bug 1417043).
In Firefox, filtering by search string in the Developer Tools panels isn’t possible (Firefox bug 1366752).
“Block element” option isn’t available for some websites (issue 5938, Firefox bug 1408996).
In Firefox 57 on Windows, there is a delay before the suggested filter appears in the “block element” dialog window (Firefox bug 1418655).
Blocked frames are not hidden (issue 6051, Firefox bug 1418975).
Occasional heavy disk activity (issue 6050, Firefox bug 1277612).
High CPU usage on some websites (issue 6067).

How to Use Adblock Plus in Private Mode · 2017-11-27 17:47 by Shannon Sewell Bell

Did you know that you can use Adblock Plus in Private mode? You’ve probably switched to private mode in the past and noticed that Adblock Plus wasn’t there. You will first need to activate it for ABP in order to use it there. Follow the steps below to activate Adblock Plus while in private mode.

Adblock Plus 3.0.1 for Firefox released · 2017-11-08 15:41 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus 3.0.1 for Firefox

This release adds many translations which were missing in the Adblock Plus 3.0 release. There are no changes beyond that.

Adblock Plus browser add-on gets comfy with Firefox 57 · 2017-11-06 15:00 by Rachel Brochado

As Firefox fans and users know, Firefox will release version 57 later in November. The new version of the browser will only allow add-ons that are compatible with the WebExtensions API, so the Adblock Plus development team has already been busy getting our award-winning add-on ready.

Adblock Plus 3.0 for Firefox released · 2017-11-06 14:21 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus 3.0 for Firefox

With Mozilla disallowing classic extensions in Firefox 57, Adblock Plus 3.0 is our first version based on the Web Extensions framework as announced before. The significant changes introduced here are unfortunate but sadly unavoidable. This is particularly visible in the user interface:

The ABP icon in the toolbar will now display the number of blocked ads (optional, can be disabled). This replaces the status information in the tooltip.
The toolbar icon will no longer open a native menu but rather a pop-up. This one uses an old design, we want to improve it soon.
The options page is not a native dialog but a web page now. It should be easier to use, but it is lacking much of the functionality that Firefox users got used to. We plan to add more functionality to it in future.
The issue reporter works mostly the same as it did before, but it won’t flag common issues locally at this point. Also, it will collect less information than it did before. We’ll keep improving it.
The “Block element” dialog offers less assistance than it did before, we will improve that as well.

As to the good news:

We largely fixed the performance degradation which has been an issue since we switched to a different storage format with Adblock Plus 2.9. The root issue is going to be addressed in Firefox 57.
The experimental element hiding emulation syntax is now available in Firefox as well.
Blocking WebRTC connections is also possible in Firefox now.

With this being a massive change, there are some known issues left which should be addressed in another release soon:

The “Block element” dialog doesn’t work in Firefox 57 under some circumstances (issue 5817).
On Firefox 57 for Android, the Adblock Plus menu item opens the (partly dysfunctional) pop-up rather than the options page (issue 5977).
In older Firefox versions such as Firefox 50, saving custom filters won’t update the list and you need to reload the options page to see your changes (issue 5971).
abp:subscribe links sometimes won’t work in Firefox 57 (issue 5965).

Web Extensions builds are now the official Adblock Plus for Firefox development builds · 2017-08-24 13:43 by Wladimir Palant

A while ago we announced our plan to migrate to the Web Extensions platform. With the current Firefox nightly builds being incompatible to classic add-ons already, we need to move a bit prematurely. So starting with Adblock Plus 2.99.0.1814 development build, our development builds will be using the Web Extensions platform. If you are on Firefox 57, make sure to install the latest Adblock Plus development build and it will be working again.

The semi-authoritative, semi-complete history of the Adblock Plus project · 2017-06-27 18:38 by Wladimir Palant

Which one was first, Adblock or Adblock Plus? If Adblock Plus was created in 2006, how come there was Adblock Plus in 2005 already? The history of the Adblock Plus project isn’t straightforward and I already tried to explain it once. The article titled A not so short history of Adblock would have made a good blog article, except… it got published too early, before the Adblock Plus blog was created. And so it ended up on the website under “Documentation” where it was eventually removed because it wasn’t a good match. Here comes another attempt, looking back at more than ten years of project history.