Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Fast Back & Forward support restored · 2007-04-29 06:26 by Wladimir Palant

This is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 0.7.5.1.

Changes

Regression fixed: list of blockable elements empty when going back to a page
Made sure that width of the blockable items list is remembered (in case it was turned into a sidebar using CSS)
Increased default value for extensions. adblockplus. subscriptions_fallbackerrors to 50

"Filters disappear" bug probably fixed · 2007-04-27 16:13 by Wladimir Palant

Changes

Probably fixed “Filters disappear” bug (bug 16488, need confirmation)
Added Estonian and Frisian (this time for real) locales
Fixed up abp: protocol implementation (caused Firefox windows to hang up when opening if menu bar was hidden by ABP)
Fixed wrapping of the object tab text (caused vertical display in Japanese)
Added moz-icon: protocol scheme to the whitelist to fix issues with FireFTP (forum thread)
Made Filter and State columns visible by default and Type column wider

Adblock Plus 0.7.5 released · 2007-04-20 18:06 by Wladimir Palant

Major changes

List of blockable items is displayed at the bottom of the browser window
Element hiding improvements: matches are now counted and appear in list of blockable items
Subscriptions can now be moved to new locations without inconveniences for users
Support for additional blocking features in Firefox 2.0.0.4 and higher
Compatibility with K-Meleon 1.1

Known issues

Mac OS X: Flash movies might not be displayed properly if “Show tabs on Flash and Java” option is switched on

Firefox 2.0.0.4 closes ad blocking loopholes · 2007-04-19 00:57 by Wladimir Palant

Adblock Plus has just got a little more useful. Yesterday two patches of mine landed on the Mozilla 1.8 branch which will be used for Firefox 2.0.0.4. What are they good for? They close loopholes that advertisers could use (and some already do use) to initiate requests to their servers without Adblock Plus interfering.

Added support for permanent redirects · 2007-04-18 06:38 by Wladimir Palant

This is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 0.7.5.

Changes

Added locales: Arabic, Frisian, Mongolian
Subscription address is now changed if download results in a permanent HTTP redirect
Next download for subscriptions containing comment with text “Redirect: http://example.com/new.address” will happen from the new address, subscription address is changed if this download is successful
After 30 failed subscription download attempts the default fallback address is requested for information on new subscription address (extensions.adblockplus.subscriptions_fallbackurl and extensions.adblockplus.subscriptions_fallbackerrors preferences added)

Known issues

~~Header of the blockable items list not visible in fullscreen mode~~
~~Object subrequests in Firefox 2.0.0.4 and higher displayed with type “object”~~

Frame handling rewritten - again · 2007-03-21 04:57 by Wladimir Palant

Handling of frames has been rewritten (hopefully for the last time) to be more consistent and to avoid hitting issues in Gecko like bug 345857. Also, multi-language packages for K-Meleon can now be created (note, these packages will not work properly in K-Meleon 1.02). The multi-language builds currently contain three languages: English, German and Russian.

Changes

Removed SeaMonkey sidebar customization hack
More consistent handling of frames, less likely to trigger bugs in Gecko (side effect: frame’s URL no longer disappers from the list of blockable items when frame’s location changes)
Changed appearance of object tabs to make them less intrusive (forum thread)
Fixed: EMBED elements containing images should be recognized as objects
Fixed: Object tabs require two restarts after installation to work correctly in Firefox 3.0 alphas (bug 16077)
Made compatible with K-Meleon 1.1, multi-language packages can be built now (those will not work correctly in K-Meleon 1.02)

Known issues

~~Errors appear in the Error Console when right-clicking in XUL files~~
~~Counter for element hiding not working on table cells and rows (bug 83830)~~
Header of the blockable items list not visible in fullscreen mode

K-Meleon 1.1 compatibility issues fixed · 2007-03-16 16:02 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 0.7.2.4+ for K-Meleon development build (2007031614) has been uploaded. Earlier builds would not install properly in K-Meleon 1.1 (currently alpha) because this version is based on Firefox rather than SeaMonkey. These issues should be fixed now and everything should work in both K-Meleon 1.0 and K-Meleon 1.1. Please report any remaining problems.

Blacklists, whitelists, and security · 2007-03-15 04:13 by Wladimir Palant

I had a lengthy discussion with Giorgio Maone (author of the NoScript extension) about what is a security solution and what isn’t. Starting point was my statement that, while being excellent for getting rid of annoyances, neither Adblock Plus nor NoScript are really security solutions. Both have the potential, so why not?

Status of "immediate unblocking" feature · 2007-03-07 03:28 by Wladimir Palant

My post about finding a way to unblock items immediately when the filters change was probably too optimistic. I am finished coding the basics but I hit some problems in Gecko.

Filterset.G - I call "bullshit" · 2007-02-13 15:01 by Wladimir Palant

I stumbled upon the Filterset.G article in Wikipedia and noticed that G recently edited it adding some “facts”. The most ridiculous one is: “There are approximately 1.5 million users of Filterset.G”. And these statistics are supposed to back it up. From the look of it G simply took the absolutely meaningless number of sites per month.