Adblock Plus and (a little) more

First Adblock Plus 1.2 release candidate available · 2010-04-14 07:00 by Wladimir Palant

The current Adblock Plus development build (1.1.3+.2010041402) is the first release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.2. All features on the roadmap have been implemented and I am starting the final translation stage.

Changes since the previous announcement:

Added Fanboy’s List as recommended filter subscription
Subscription selection dialog: if multiple options are available for user’s locale one is selected randomly
Filter composer: Added “block entire domain” as suggestion (forum topic)
Firefox Mobile/Fennec: Added Adblock Plus status to site identity panel, clicking will disable/enable Adblock Plus on site
Fixed: Subscription selection not always showing up on first start if previous browser session is restored
Fixed: Toolbar icon not showing correctly with Songbird’s new default theme

Changes to the "Show tabs on Flash and Java" feature, second round · 2010-03-30 07:00 by Wladimir Palant

The current Adblock Plus development build (1.1.3+.2010033002) once again reworks “Show tabs on Flash and Java” feature. This should keep all of the advantages of the previous approach but make the issues (unreliable and ugly display on Linux, focus stealing, bad positioning) go away.

NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED status in nsIHttpChannel · 2010-03-19 09:17 by Wladimir Palant

Dear Lazyweb! Do you have any idea why XMLHttpRequest might fail with channel.status being NS_ERROR_NOT_INITIALIZED? This seems to be happening consistently for some Adblock Plus users when downloading https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt. This issue is happening on all platforms and across all supported Firefox versions (I see 3.0, 3.5, 3.6 in the logs).

The unnecesary Ars Technica rant · 2010-03-16 16:25 by Wladimir Palant

Please forgive me this (hopefully unusual) rant. It is simply that I am so disappointed. Over the years I learned that quality journalism is extremely rare. I also came to expect very little from the media (both online and offline) — most often, journalists fail at what I consider the very basics of their job, namely understanding what they are writing about and verifying the information (I very much appreciate the exceptions to that rule but they are just that — exceptions). No problem, if it is important I can usually find the original source and get myself an overview. As it is, getting me disappointed is hard. But apparently not impossible.

Help needed: guide for new subscription authors · 2010-03-12 16:10 by Wladimir Palant

I had to guide a few people through the process of setting up a new filter list recently, this reminded me that documentation for new subscription authors is long overdue. Unfortunately, explaining everything necessary isn’t exactly simple and I don’t have the time to write this document. Which is why I want to ask for your help. I created a Google document where I listed the points that I feel should be mentioned. Maybe there are some more points that I forgot but either way: they need to be fleshed out.

The devastating effects of ad blocking · 2010-03-08 15:08 by Wladimir Palant

A few years ago I used to blog about some of the more ridiculous claims that ad blocking opponents make and take them apart. Fortunately, I no longer have to. Other people do this now and they are much more successful expressing their opinions. So I don’t really need to write about the recent article at Ars Technica on the effects of ad blocking. I do so mostly to link to the responses so that I can find them again.

Linux New Media Award for Adblock Plus · 2010-03-04 23:49 by Wladimir Palant

I was at CeBIT today, collecting the Linux Media Award for the best open source Firefox extension. I just want to repeat what I said there: I really didn’t expect to come that far. After all, initially I only intended to quickly improve Adblock and find somebody to maintain the new codebase. And now, four years later, I am still continuing to improve Adblock Plus and there is much more work to be done. This is largely the “fault” of the passionate community who has been a great motivator. So: everybody who helped me and supported the project in all these years (you know who you are and I cannot possibly mention everybody) — thank you!

How are supported applications chosen for Adblock Plus? · 2010-02-11 19:30 by Wladimir Palant

It is time to formalize how I choose which applications/application versions to support in Adblock Plus. There are several categories here:

Applications with very high user numbers (particularly with high numbers of users testing Adblock Plus development builds): that’s currently only Firefox. Supporting multiple application versions is possible, bugs will usually be caught by the community before an Adblock Plus release. Still, once a Firefox version gets close to end-of-life (Mozilla will no longer ship security updates) its user numbers drop considerably and it gets harder to get Adblock Plus properly tested there. Which is one reason why I am targeting mostly the versions supported by Mozilla (currently Firefox 3.5 and 3.6) and drop support for outdated versions eventually (Firefox 3.0 support is currently being phased out).

Major changes to the "Show tabs on Flash and Java" feature · 2010-02-03 05:39 by Wladimir Palant

The current Adblock Plus development build (1.1.3+.2010020302) brings major changes to the “Show tabs on Flash and Java” feature. While the tab displayed on Flash and Java content should mostly look the same as before, it is implemented in an entirely different way now.

About.com Reader's Choice Awards - Adblock Plus needs your vote! · 2010-02-02 10:00 by Wladimir Palant

Don’t have enough polls to participate in? Good news for you: About.com started its Reader’s Choice Awards program and you might know some of the finalists. Now it all depends on your vote. Head over to the poll page, page 4 is particularly interesting — it lists Adblock Plus as one of the finalists in the “Best Overall Add-On” category. You certainly want to go to page 2 as well and vote for Firefox in the “Best Major Desktop Browser” category. If you already had a chance to use Firefox Mobile (Fennec), maybe even with Adblock Plus installed, page 3 is where you can vote for it.