Adblock Plus and (a little) more
First attempt to have proper ad blocking in Chrome · 2011-02-22 19:01 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.0.26.622) removes the restriction that only some filters will really block downloads. It should block everything that the previous version was blocking and some more. So if you notice something that is no longer being blocked (as well as other issues of course), please report it with a comment here or in the forum.
The other noticeable change since the previous announcement should be the Adblock Plus icon for websites where Adblock Plus is disabled — a gray icon is being used now. We also added a work-around to prevent breaking FlipViewer Xpress.
Improving startup times · 2011-02-15 18:36 by Wladimir Palant
I implemented significant changes on the Adblock Plus core that allow the current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.5a2.2826) to cache much of the data required at runtime on disk (cache.js file in the adblockplus directory). Instead of reading in patterns.ini file on startup Adblock Plus will now only read the cache file (requires in my tests approximately 35% of the old startup time). It will still load patterns.ini when its data is required, typically when the first page loads. For me this only requires 40% of the old startup time however because the data structures do not need to be rebuilt. So even if your browser doesn’t start with a blank page you should see around 25% speedup. And much of the delay will happen after the browser window opens. The new approach might have caused issues, please post a comment here or create a topic in the forum if you notice any.
Other changes since Adblock Plus 1.3.3 release:
- Special icon state for “whitelisted” webpages has been removed, Adblock Plus shows up as disabled now (forum topic).
- Corruption of patterns.ini file should be less likely now. If a corrupted patterns.ini is recognized a backup will be restored automatically.
- Added support for Do-Not-Track header, will be activated automatically if a subscription like EasyPrivacy is added (forum topic).
- Element hiding stylesheet is now written on disk as elemhide.css, this is both faster and more memory-effective.
- Keyboard shortcut for Preferences is now Ctrl-Shift-F in Firefox 4 (Cmd-Shift-O on OS X) because Ctrl-Shift-E is already taken.
- Fixed: Disabling filters from the list of blockable items won’t actually disable the filter in Firefox 3.6
- Fixed: Selecting a filter (via blockable items’ “Edit filter in effect”) in an already open Preferences dialog doesn’t work
Help needed to test YouTube ad blocking changes · 2011-02-09 11:27 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.0.26.613) changes the “Block ads inside YouTube videos” feature very significantly. We need your help to ensure that all ads are still being blocked. If you find a video that shows ads when viewed on youtube.com (not via a third-party website, see above), please report it as a comment here or in our forum.
K-Meleon builds mostly usable now · 2011-01-28 16:51 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus for K-Meleon 1.3.5a2.155) fixes some more issues:
- List of blockable items works correctly now
- Left and middle mouse button clicks on the icons work
- Adding subscriptions from the web (via abp: protocol) is possible
- Dialogs opened by Adblock Plus have more sane sizes, persisting size and position works again as well
- Search in Preferences window working again (worked around K-Meleon bug 1237 but it would still be nice to see this bug fixed)
extensions.adblockplus.sendReport_keypreference is considered properly if set
Remaining known issues:
- K-Meleon crashes if the report link is clicked after submitting the report
- ABP icon state and list of blockable items do not update correctly if a blank tab is open
- “Tabs on Flash and Java” feature doesn’t work
- Size of the “Add filter subscription” dialog is set incorrectly
- Blockable items window cannot be closed with hotkeys (Esc or Ctrl+Shift+V)
Some K-Meleon issues fixed · 2011-01-21 11:20 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus for K-Meleon 1.3.5a2.145) fixes some issues:
- ABP icon state now works correctly with multiple windows
- Issue reporter succeeds sending a report
- About dialog is available now
- Links will open correctly in a K-Meleon tab now
Remaining known issues:
- List of blockable items doesn’t show anything
- K-Meleon crashes if the report link is clicked after submitting the report
- ABP icon state doesn’t update correctly when switching from/to a blank tab
- Window sizes aren’t persisted properly
- “Tabs on Flash and Java” feature doesn’t work
- Left-click and middle-click on the icons won’t work
- Search in Preferences window is only partially working (this is K-Meleon bug 1237)
- Subscription links (abp: protocol) do not work
Adblock Plus for K-Meleon development builds are available again · 2011-01-18 17:50 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus for K-Meleon development builds are now available again (for K-Meleon 1.6 only). Unlike for the other development builds, the update process here is manual — both on my side (because a Linux server cannot compile Windows code) and on user’s side (because K-Meleon doesn’t have an extension installation mechanism). So, grab a build, install it by unpacking into the K-Meleon application directory and subscribe to the RSS feed because that’s the only way for you to get notified about important changes.
These development builds are very much work in progress, many parts aren’t working yet. Here are the known issues:
- List of blockable items doesn’t show anything
- ABP icon state doesn’t always update properly (particularly on tab changes and when working with multiple windows)
- Issue reporter gets stuck collecting data
- About dialog won’t load
- Window sizes aren’t persisted properly
- “Tabs on Flash and Java” feature doesn’t work
- Left-click and middle-click on the icons won’t work
- Search in Preferences window is only partially working (this is K-Meleon bug 1237)
First Adblock Plus for Chrome development build · 2010-12-18 18:34 by Wladimir Palant
Under https://adblockplus.org/devbuilds/adblockpluschrome/adblockpluschrome-1.0.21.20101218.crx you can install the first Adblock Plus for Chrome development build. Please note that it isn’t very different from AdThwart yet, only a bunch of smaller changes.
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 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
Element Hiding Helper 1.1 release candidate available · 2010-10-30 06:00 by Wladimir Palant
Element Hiding Helper 1.1rc.20101030 is a release candidate, last chance to report bugs before Element Hiding Helper 1.1 is released (hopefully on Tuesday)!
Changes since previous announcement:
- Fixed: wrong window size calculation sometimes messed up displayed height of the elements
- Fixed: element marker position was updated every 20 milliseconds (endless loop)
- Better handling for the case that the marked element is not visible due to page scrolling
- About dialog: now shows localized homepage link