Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Introducing Eyeo GmbH, the company behind Adblock Plus · 2011-09-30 12:04 by Wladimir Palant
A few weeks ago we (meaning Till Faida and me) founded a new company called Eyeo GmbH (pronounced aɪ-o). Yesterday I got the official confirmation that all the formalities are done. This company will help us fund continued development of Adblock Plus now. My official title is “Managing director” now but don’t worry: I will continue doing what I’ve always done — lead Adblock Plus development and make sure that we have a great product to present. And Till will make sure that the business part works and we get money to put into the development (ok, that’s pretty much what he has been doing all along). And our community will hopefully continue being the great help it always was.
Automatic updates to Adblock Plus 1.3.10 temporarily disabled [Update] · 2011-09-29 07:49 by Wladimir Palant
Yesterday I asked Mozilla to put Adblock Plus 1.3.10 into the sandbox again to disable automatic updates. This is not because anything is wrong with Adblock Plus 1.3.10, it is actually because of a bug in Firefox 7 — updating the browser while an extension update is pending makes that extension disappear from the list. Mozilla promised a solution in the next few days at which point the automatic updates can be enabled again.
Adblock Plus 1.3.10 released · 2011-09-28 10:23 by Wladimir Palant
Changes
- Added Latvian and Albanian translations.
- Fixed some minor issues.
- Some users will be asked to complete a survey about Adblock Plus.
Are undetectable changes to a native prototype possible? · 2011-07-11 14:27 by Wladimir Palant
This is a follow-up to Do JavaScript proxies allow undetectable function wrappers?. After that blog post I managed to solve the main problem: with Function.toString() and Function.toSource() being the only information leaks (bug 650299) one only needs to wrap these functions as well to get undetectable function proxies. However, the remaining problem is manipulating Window.prototype.open so that it actually returns my wrapper and the webpage can neither detect nor revert this manipulation.
Adblock Plus 1.3.9 released · 2011-06-28 17:54 by Wladimir Palant
Note: As usually, the update notification might take a while — this release needs to be reviewed on AMO first.
Major changes
- Added experimental support for Firefox Sync
- New extension icons
- Updated for changes in Thunderbird 5
- Various minor fixes
Firefox Sync support added · 2011-05-31 18:51 by Wladimir Palant
Firefox Sync support is a feature that has been under development for the past two years. It seems that we finally have something that is stable enough to be included in Adblock Plus, you can test it in Adblock Plus 1.3.9a.3030. Please note that we now support Sync both for desktop and mobile Firefox versions and that it will become the preferred way of getting complicated Adblock Plus settings over to Firefox Mobile (Adblock Plus user interface on mobile is very minimalistic and doesn’t allow configuring anything complicated directly).
Remarks:
- This feature is still very experimental.
- Syncing Adblock Plus filters isn’t switched on by default even if Firefox Sync is configured. You need to go to the Adblock Plus menu and enable “Sync Adblock Plus settings” under “Options”.
- The option will only be visible if the browser supports Sync and Sync is set up. In Firefox 3.5/3.6 you will need to install the Firefox Sync extension.
- At this point, Sync does not create an exact copy of the Adblock Plus settings. Order of filters/subscriptions isn’t synced, neither are hit counts. Disabled filters in filter subscriptions will not be disabled in the remote system (a disabled custom filter on the other hand will be disabled).
- If changes to filter/subscription are made both locally and remotely (merge conflict) local changes always win.
Another notable change in this development build: Adblock Plus icons have been updated (forum topic).
Adblock Plus 1.3.8 released · 2011-05-23 10:53 by Wladimir Palant
Note: As usually, an update notification might take a while — this release needs to be reviewed on AMO first.
Major changes
- Fixed: Corruption in Adblock Plus data files might result in Adblock Plus being unable to block anything
- Fixed some minor SeaMonkey 2.1 issues
- Some minor improvements to the issue reporter
Adblock Plus 1.3.7 released · 2011-05-10 16:52 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- Added Brasilian Portuguese translation again
- Slightly improved performance
- Fixed a potential memory leak (only occurring under rare conditions)
- Various minor fixes
Donations policy change · 2011-05-04 18:01 by Wladimir Palant
It has been eight months since Adblock Plus changed from a hobby project to a full-time employment for me. The other person employed in the project is Till who you might know from the forums and who is responsible for our business development. Unfortunately, despite the help I am getting from Till and the numerous volunteers there is a noticeable resources shortage in the project that is slowing down Adblock Plus development.
Do JavaScript proxies allow undetectable function wrappers? · 2011-04-15 18:13 by Wladimir Palant
I am looking into whether an extension can use JavaScript proxies to do something similar to the built-in pop-up blocker since the built-in pop-up blocker uses a fixed logic that cannot be extended. The goal is to wrap window.open method to verify that any calls are “legit”. Unfortunately, no matter what I try the webpage is able to detect that it is dealing with a proxy and not the real function.