Adblock Plus and (a little) more
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.
How reliable are Mozilla's performance measurements? · 2011-04-07 15:38 by Wladimir Palant
One of the replies to my previous blog post prompted me to take a closer look at the raw data from the add-on performance measurements. Can the numbers displayed on the blame list be trusted at all?
Some more details on Mozilla's add-on performance measurements · 2011-04-06 14:35 by Wladimir Palant
Mozilla Add-ons recently published an article on their effort to recognize slow add-ons. It comes complete with a list of worst offenders. Some media already picked up on that article and users are listening up. So everything is progressing nicely towards the goal — pressure on developers starts building up, I already had something like 10 people point out to me that Adblock Plus is number 12 on that list.
Taking a vacation from work with the community · 2011-04-06 00:24 by Wladimir Palant
Last week was very hard on me. I had to work under much pressure to fix several critical issues discovered immediately after Adblock Plus 1.3.5 release. At the same time the Adblock Plus community which used to be a great motivator seemed to go out of its way to demotivate me:
Adblock Plus 1.3.6 released · 2011-04-04 12:35 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- “Recommend us on Facebook” button can now be easily hidden (click the cross next to it).
- New translations: Esperanto, Upper Sorbian
- Improved display of web addresses in Adblock Plus user interface for right-to-left languages (Hebrew, Arabic).
- Various stability improvements
Adblock Plus 1.3.6 to be released on Monday · 2011-04-01 11:22 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus 1.3.6 was supposed to be released today. However, Mozilla noticed that Adblock Plus 1.3.6rc.2951 and 1.3.6rc.2952 caused Firefox 4.2a1pre to crash under certain conditions (bug 646839). I solved this problem with Adblock Plus 1.3.6rc.2956 now. Please test this build thoroughly and report any issues, if no problems arise we will have a release on Monday.
Adblock Plus 1.3.6 release candidate available · 2011-03-30 17:21 by Wladimir Palant
We will be releasing Adblock Plus 1.3.6 soon, the current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.6rc.2951) is a release candidate. There has been a number of changes since Adblock Plus 1.3.5:
- “Recommend us on Facebook” button can now be easily hidden (a cross button next to it)
- Improved display of web addresses in Adblock Plus user interface for right-to-left languages (Hebrew, Arabic).
- New translation: Esperanto
- Fixed: Some routers are broken by Do Not Track header.
- Fixed: Redirect blocking feature has a negative impact on memory management in Firefox.
- Fixed: Adblock Plus user interface is broken in Thunderbird and SeaMonkey Mail if a non-default window layout is used.
- Fixed: Issue reporter claims “too many filter subscriptions” even if the subscriptions are disabled.
- Fixed: Flash is broken in outdated Firefox 3.6.x versions (up to Firefox 3.6.12).
- Fixed: Middle-clicking ABP icon has seemingly no effect if Adblock Plus is disabled on the page.
Known issues
- Redirect blocking no longer works in Firefox Mobile 4 (bug 646373).
Do Not Track support in Adblock Plus [Updated] · 2011-03-25 23:22 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus 1.3.5 has been released today. One of the new features is support for the Do Not Track proposal which was previously only available in development builds. Given that this feature is not obvious I want to answer some questions.
Adblock Plus 1.3.5 released · 2011-03-25 12:46 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- Added support for Firefox Mobile 4
- Added support for Do Not Track proposal
- Special icon state for “whitelisted” webpages removed
- Various performance improvements
Firefox 4 is there! · 2011-03-22 19:05 by Wladimir Palant
And since there are not enough blog posts about Firefox 4 on Planet, I am going to remind you that Firefox 4 is available now and you should go get it while it is hot. Seriously, do it. Lots of work went into this release and Firefox 4 is a huge step forward.