Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Adblock Plus 1.3.2 released · 2010-12-09 23:00 by Wladimir Palant
Major changes
- Persian translation added again, some other translations updated
- A few minor issue reporter improvements
- Fixed a bug preventing element hiding rules from working in some scenarios
- Fixed toolbar icon’s text which was showing up to the right of the icon rather than below it
Rewriting JavaScript code with JSHydra · 2010-12-07 20:15 by Wladimir Palant
I was thinking about possible ways to rewrite Adblock Plus code automatically. One way to use it would be the online tool to find redundant filters. Due to its use of Adblock Plus code (which requires JavaScript 1.7) this tool would only work in Firefox. I didn’t really want to give up the convenient features of JavaScript 1.7, neither did I want to fork my code for this web tool which I would need to sync up regularly. Automated rewriting is really the only option but it is usually too complicated.
Faster filter matching algorithm · 2010-11-26 17:04 by Wladimir Palant
It has been a while since I looked into filter matching algorithms and settled on the one that Adblock Plus still uses today, mostly unchanged. However, a simpler algorithm with even better performance characteristics was suggested recently, this algorithm is implemented in the current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.5a.20101125). The side-effect is that many filters will now be marked as slow, filter subscriptions will need to adapt to take full advantage of this algorithm (forum topic). This is why this change will most likely be reverted before Adblock Plus 1.3.5 release and only released with Adblock Plus 1.4.
Other changes since Adblock Plus 1.3.1 release:
- Subscription selection: Really hiding progress indicator after full list of subscriptions loads, it causes significant CPU load despite being in background.
- Issue reporter: Now sending URL of the referring page as well to make dealing with pop-ups easier.
- Performance: patterns.ini is no longer saved on application shutdown if nothing changed.
- Fixed: Hit counts for filters aren’t saved automatically on application shutdown in Firefox 4.
- Fixed: Linux: Links in Adblock Plus user interface always open in an external application (bug 23441).
- Fixed: List of recently submitted issues has a horizontal scrollbar with some themes (forum topic).
- Fixed: When displaying toolbar icons with text, text for the Adblock Plus icon displays to the right of the icon (forum topic).
- Fixed: Adblock Plus icon is broken in SeaMonkey Mail (nightly builds only).
Adblock Plus 1.3.1 released · 2010-11-03 13:22 by Wladimir Palant
Note: Adblock Plus 1.3 release was pulled due to an issue with the builds.
Major changes
- New issue reporter allows notifying subscription authors about issues easily
- Better Firefox 4 support, dropped support for Firefox 3.0
- Significantly improved performance and memory use
Adblock Plus 1.3 release candidate is available · 2010-10-30 06:00 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus 1.3rc.20101030 is a release candidate, last chance to report bugs before Adblock Plus 1.3 is released (hopefully on Tuesday)!
Changes since the previous announcement:
- Dropped support for Firefox 3.0, Songbird versions before Songbird 1.9 and Midbrowser
- Got rid of “timed textboxes are deprecated” warning in console
- Simpler/faster preference management module
- About dialog: now shows localized homepage link
- Issue reporter: Fixed wrong character encoding in server response
Dropping support for Firefox 3.0 · 2010-10-25 14:37 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus 1.3 will be using a simpler and faster module to manage preferences. This module isn’t in Adblock Plus development builds yet but it is already used in the latest Element Hiding Helper build. As it turned out, this module isn’t working properly in Firefox 3.0 due to some JavaScript engine bug. It’s not clear which bug it is and whether it has a simple work-around. Frankly, I am not very inclined to spend time researching historical bugs in Bugzilla. Instead, Adblock Plus 1.3 and Element Hiding Helper 1.1 will no longer support Firefox 3.0. Anybody still using Firefox 3.0 should be reminded that Mozilla ended support for Firefox 3.0 in March 2010, and by now it has a large number of known and unpatched security issues — using it to browse the web is not safe. I highly recommend updating to the latest Firefox release (currently Firefox 3.6).
First Adblock Plus 1.3 Beta · 2010-10-19 06:00 by Wladimir Palant
With Adblock Plus 1.3b.20101019 we are entering the beta phase for Adblock Plus 1.3. Most important thing to note is that the issue reporter is pretty much done, at least the part living in the extension. The server-side part of it will still need some work but reports submitted now should reach subscription maintainers eventually — so please enter “TEST” as comment when you are testing the feature so that these reports can be sorted out easily.
Other changes since the previous announcement:
- Blockable items tooltip will display information on disabled tooltips as well (forum topic)
- Triggering a subscription update always forces a re-download now
- ABP icon tooltip no longer counts disabled filters and subscriptions
- Improved filter matching performance by 20-35%
- Better filter composer suggestions (forum topic)
Adblock Plus and Element Hiding Helper issues in current Firefox nightlies · 2010-10-18 12:01 by Wladimir Palant
A few days ago an important and much anticipated change landed for the Firefox nightlies: JavaScript compartments. In theory, this should improve performance and security without having any side-effects whatsoever. This is a very radical change to the JavaScript engine architecture however and it caused a number of regressions of course. Some of them affect Adblock Plus and Element Hiding Helper extensions, I better list them before more bug reports are filed against Adblock Plus. Right now you can only hit these issues if you are using the latest Firefox nightly builds, not Firefox 4 Beta 6 however. I hope that the most critical issues will be resolved before Firefox 4 Beta 7.
Reporting filter issues comfortably · 2010-09-25 18:35 by Wladimir Palant
Users often have problems finding the right contact address to report filter issue and when they find it they struggle getting together the necessary information. Which is why Adblock Plus 1.3a.20100924 development build comes with an issue reporter that will collect all the information and send the report automatically. You can find it in the menu of the ABP icon. The forum topic on this feature has some slightly outdated screenshots.
This feature is not complete yet:
- A number scenarios need special handling, e.g.: user didn’t add any filter subscriptions, Adblock Plus is disabled, user selected “other” as issue type. The special handling here will be added later.
- If data transmission fails Adblock Plus currently isn’t of much help. The idea is to offer sending the data in a browser window — it is more useful when dealing with SSL issues for example.
- A privacy policy needs to be written so that it can be linked to from the issue reporter.
- Subscription maintainers aren’t currently being notified. So chances are that nobody will see your report unless you post a link to it in a forum.
Other changes since the previous announcement:
- Element hiding now has a significantly lower impact on startup time. My measurements indicate that this will lower the overall startup delay for a typical Adblock Plus configuration by 10-15%.
- Default action for the ABP icon is now to open the menu — with the issue reporter opening the list of blockable items will no longer be what most users want. To change it back you can change extensions.adblockplus.defaulttoolbaraction (old value was 1).
- The add-on bar landed in Firefox 4. The new development build will use it as the default location for the ABP icon.
- Toolbar icon looks “right” in Firefox 4 now.
- Filter subscription added by other extensions will no longer persist, that extension will need to re-add the subscription on every browser start (makes sure the subscription goes away automatically if that extension is uninstalled).
- Filter subscription downloads are better distributed across the week
Redesigning Adblock Plus preferences dialog · 2010-09-13 17:37 by Wladimir Palant
Some of you probably don’t know, Future development is the part of the Adblock Plus forum where change proposals to Adblock Plus, this website and other extensions like Element Hiding Helper are discussed. You cannot create new topics there but interesting proposals from other forum parts will be moved. I am writing all this because I created a new topic there a few minutes ago: Redesigning preferences dialog. The lengthy post lists six change proposals which will hopefully make your life better. If you are interested feel free to comment in the forum (no registration required but you might want to register to get reply notifications). Please have understanding that off-topic discussions in this forum part will be removed.