Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Checksum validation for subscription downloads added · 2008-10-30 10:19 by Wladimir Palant

Changes

For subscription downloads, a comment “! Checksum: abcd” is now interpreted and files with wrong checksum are rejected (forum topic, reference implementation to add checksums)
Preferences: Filter export inserts a checksum comment into the file (forum topic)
Preferences: For invalid filters, the tooltip now explains why they are invalid
Preferences: Added a way to disable/enable filters and subscriptions from context menu

Known issues

~~Preferences: Tooltip is being shown when hovering empty space~~
~~Preferences: No tooltip on overflowing cell text~~
~~Preferences: “Delete” context menu items isn’t enabled for filter subscriptions~~
~~Subscription download fails if the download location isn’t HTTP~~
~~Last line of patterns.ini isn’t read correctly when the browser starts~~
~~Filters in a newly added subscription are still being marked as “too short”~~
~~Filters of a disabled subscription show up as “too short” after restart~~
~~“Collapse blocked elements” option has no effect~~
A choice to make a column visible doesn’t always persist
Double-clicking a group title starts editing a new filter/filter subscription
Bug 462504 will lead to data loss if JIT is turned on for chrome (affects browser nightly builds 20081028 and later)

Fixing the obvious bugs · 2008-10-28 21:22 by Wladimir Palant

Warning: Format of patterns.ini file changed in a way that is not backwards compatible. If you want to go back to an older version of Adblock Plus, keep a backup or you will loose all your filters.

Note: Due to extensive redesign, bugs are expected, especially around the Preferences dialog. Please report the issues you find.

Known issues

~~Elements matching whitelist filters are still blocked and collapsed~~
~~Toolbar icon tooltip counts whitelisted elements as blocked~~
~~When filters are reapplied after a new filter is added, whitelisted elements are ignored~~
~~Enabling/disabling filters in Preferences dialog is only respected after a browser restart~~
Preferences: Tooltip is being shown when hovering empty space
Preferences: No tooltip on overflowing cell text
Preferences: “Delete” context menu items isn’t enabled for filter subscriptions
Subscription download fails if the download location isn’t HTTP
Last line of patterns.ini isn’t read correctly when the browser starts
Filters in a newly added subscription are still being marked as “too short”
Filters of a disabled subscription show up as “too short” after restart
“Collapse blocked elements” option has no effect

Core classes redesign complete · 2008-10-28 17:45 by Wladimir Palant

Note: Due to extensive redesign, bugs are expected, especially around the Preferences dialog. Please report the issues you find.

Changes

Blockable items: Filters can now be disabled and re-enabled from the context menu
Firefox 1.5, Thunderbird 1.5, SeaMonkey 1.0, Songbird 0.5/0.6 are no longer supported
Flock 1.2 and Songbird 0.7 are supported now
Redesigned core classes for better maintainability, added code documentation and tests for large parts of the core
Changed patterns.ini format to allow user-defined filters to be stored in any filter group
Adblock Plus 0.6 preferences are no longer imported on upgrade
Adblock preferences are no longer imported on upgrade (filter list still imported)
Preferences: eliminated delay when Preferences window is opened and much of the delay when changes are applied
Preferences: Added View menu to control visible columns and sorting, removed column picker
Fixed: “Edit filter in effect” might select the filter in a disabled subscription even though it exists in an enabled one
Preferences: Groups containing user-defined filters can now be disabled as well”
Preferences: Removed “Add filter” dummy from the list
Preferences: Comments can now be inserted in all filter groups, not only “Advertisement filters”

Known issues

Comments cannot be moved between filter groups
~~After first download of the subscription all filters are marked as “too short”~~
~~Songbird: Links opened by Adblock Plus open in the default browser~~

Fake "hg rebase" implementation · 2008-10-24 11:13 by Wladimir Palant

After doing two merges in Mercurial when I couldn’t push my changes due to totally unrelated changes in the remote repository, I noticed that mq works great but having a fully automated solution instead of running several commands manually would be desirable.

Adblock Plus goes Mercurial · 2008-10-23 14:58 by Wladimir Palant

After all the bigger projects already announced their move from CVS to Mercurial, it is now my turn. A Mercurial code repository for Adblock Plus was created at MozDev yesterday (thanks to Doug for the fast response), and now I am done updating the scripts and instructions on the web.

Generating JavaScript documentation · 2008-10-21 10:05 by Wladimir Palant

After years of neglecting code documentation I finally came around and added JSDoc comments to much of the Adblock Plus core. The next problem now — what tool should I use to extract these comments and generate documentation? Problem is, none of the off-the-shelf tools know JavaScript 1.8.

MAOW presentation slides · 2008-09-22 10:47 by Wladimir Palant

I was invited to give a talk at the Mozilla Add-Ons Workshop in Paris this weekend so I tried to give people an idea what it takes to maintain an extension project that already got rolling. The presentation went fairly well even though I could have told much more and I had to scrap the slide on security because the time has simply run out. My slides can be viewed here (note that FullerScreen extension messes the slides up badly, as we discovered just before the presentation).

Creating quality software · 2008-09-13 15:56 by Wladimir Palant

It got quiet around Adblock Plus again after some great strides towards Adblock Plus 0.8. That doesn’t mean however that nothing is happening, on the contrary. However, when I was about to add another small user interface change (one of the few that are still due for 0.8 release), I noticed that this is way more complicated than it should be. Why?

Filtering HTML code in Adblock Plus · 2008-09-11 18:54 by Wladimir Palant

Henrik Gemal blogged about a new feature in Firefox, extensions can now inspect and modify the response of HTTP requests before it gets to the sender. And the best news is, it is coming to Firefox 3.0.3 as well, so extension developers don’t need to wait a year before this feature can be used. Obviously, Firebug and Firekeeper developers want this — the former to display the response, the latter to prevent a malicious response from ever reaching the sender. However, it could be useful for Adblock Plus as well.

Don't bother reporting your plugin issues to me · 2008-08-27 12:18 by Wladimir Palant

Adblock Plus is based on content policies, and content policies don’t get along with plugins too well — so I am used to dealing with plugin issues that are regularly reported as bugs in Adblock Plus. Typically, in those cases I try to reproduce the issue, create minimized testcases and report the problem at bugzilla.mozilla.org (if there is no such report already of course). Finding the actual source of the problem and fixing it would require more time than I can spend but thanks to Boris Zbarsky and Johnny Stenback this still didn’t work out too bad, all the issues I am aware of have been fixed in Firefox 3.