Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Improved experimental builds · 2011-09-29 11:50 by Wladimir Palant
The experimental development builds starting with Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.1.4.694 will disable the “old” blocking functionality now, only the new webRequest API will be used for blocking. This improves performance and memory use, it also makes sure that issues with dynamically loaded images no longer happen. I can only see one side-effect: blocked images are no longer collapsed, instead you will see a “broken image” placeholder.
Also, experimental builds will now appear as “Adblock Plus for Google Chrome (Beta) experimental build” in the extensions list, this way you can always check whether you are running the experimental or the “normal” build.
Experimental Adblock Plus for Chrome builds available with better blocking · 2011-09-28 19:20 by Wladimir Palant
Starting with Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.1.4.685 there are two development builds — the “standard” version and the experimental version. The experimental version uses the new webRequest API that allows Adblock Plus to block requests better. Unfortunately, this API isn’t stable yet which means that you need to go to chrome://flags and activate “Experimental Extension APIs” option. Then you will be able to install the experimental build and it will update to new experimental versions automatically.
What you should expect in this build:
- All ads blocked, no matter how fast the page loads.
- Background images and in-video ads will be blocked (feel free to uncheck “Block ads inside YouTube videos” option, it should no longer be required).
Known issues:
- Issues with sites loading images dynamically are not resolved yet, the old blocking mechanism is still active in these builds.
- Some false positives possible because Chrome doesn’t distinguish between objects and object subrequests.
Let us know if you see more issues with these builds.
Firefox Sync support added · 2011-05-31 18:51 by Wladimir Palant
Firefox Sync support is a feature that has been under development for the past two years. It seems that we finally have something that is stable enough to be included in Adblock Plus, you can test it in Adblock Plus 1.3.9a.3030. Please note that we now support Sync both for desktop and mobile Firefox versions and that it will become the preferred way of getting complicated Adblock Plus settings over to Firefox Mobile (Adblock Plus user interface on mobile is very minimalistic and doesn’t allow configuring anything complicated directly).
Remarks:
- This feature is still very experimental.
- Syncing Adblock Plus filters isn’t switched on by default even if Firefox Sync is configured. You need to go to the Adblock Plus menu and enable “Sync Adblock Plus settings” under “Options”.
- The option will only be visible if the browser supports Sync and Sync is set up. In Firefox 3.5/3.6 you will need to install the Firefox Sync extension.
- At this point, Sync does not create an exact copy of the Adblock Plus settings. Order of filters/subscriptions isn’t synced, neither are hit counts. Disabled filters in filter subscriptions will not be disabled in the remote system (a disabled custom filter on the other hand will be disabled).
- If changes to filter/subscription are made both locally and remotely (merge conflict) local changes always win.
Another notable change in this development build: Adblock Plus icons have been updated (forum topic).
Adblock Plus 1.3.6 to be released on Monday · 2011-04-01 11:22 by Wladimir Palant
Adblock Plus 1.3.6 was supposed to be released today. However, Mozilla noticed that Adblock Plus 1.3.6rc.2951 and 1.3.6rc.2952 caused Firefox 4.2a1pre to crash under certain conditions (bug 646839). I solved this problem with Adblock Plus 1.3.6rc.2956 now. Please test this build thoroughly and report any issues, if no problems arise we will have a release on Monday.
Adblock Plus 1.3.6 release candidate available · 2011-03-30 17:21 by Wladimir Palant
We will be releasing Adblock Plus 1.3.6 soon, the current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.6rc.2951) is a release candidate. There has been a number of changes since Adblock Plus 1.3.5:
- “Recommend us on Facebook” button can now be easily hidden (a cross button next to it)
- Improved display of web addresses in Adblock Plus user interface for right-to-left languages (Hebrew, Arabic).
- New translation: Esperanto
- Fixed: Some routers are broken by Do Not Track header.
- Fixed: Redirect blocking feature has a negative impact on memory management in Firefox.
- Fixed: Adblock Plus user interface is broken in Thunderbird and SeaMonkey Mail if a non-default window layout is used.
- Fixed: Issue reporter claims “too many filter subscriptions” even if the subscriptions are disabled.
- Fixed: Flash is broken in outdated Firefox 3.6.x versions (up to Firefox 3.6.12).
- Fixed: Middle-clicking ABP icon has seemingly no effect if Adblock Plus is disabled on the page.
Known issues
- Redirect blocking no longer works in Firefox Mobile 4 (bug 646373).
Adblock Plus 1.3.5 for K-Meleon release candidate available · 2011-03-23 16:34 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus for K-Meleon 1.3.5rc.164) is a release candidate. While there are still some unresolved issues, I think that it is more important to bring out Adblock Plus 1.3.5 for K-Meleon when we release the Firefox version. Changes since the previous announcement:
- Fixed broken toolbar icon when using K-Meleon on Windows XP
- K-Meleon packages now contain all the locales that are available for Adblock Plus
- Object tabs are working
- No longer crashing in K-Meleon 1.7 (however, not fully functional there either)
- Initial size of “Add filter subscription” dialog is set correctly now
- Added work-around for K-Meleon bug 1297
Remaining known issues:
- K-Meleon crashes if the report link is clicked after submitting the report (K-Meleon bug 1299)
- ABP icon state and list of blockable items do not update correctly if a blank tab is open
- Size of the “Add filter subscription” dialog changes incorrectly when switching to “Add a different subscription” and back (K-Meleon bug 1298)
- Blockable items window cannot be closed with hotkeys (Esc or Ctrl+Shift+V)
- Preferences dialog: “Show in toolbar” option should be hidden
Installation:
https://adblockplus.org/devbuilds/adblockpluskmeleon/
Adblock Plus 1.3.5 release candidate available · 2011-03-19 14:59 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.5rc.2902) is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.3.5. We are already in string freeze, the translators are in the process of updating the translations. There is a slight chance that Firefox Sync support will still be added, other than that the remaining changes should be minor (maybe a few changes to the K-Meleon support so that we can release this version for K-Meleon as well).
The area that needs most testing is still Firefox Mobile 4.0 support, please give it a try. Changes since the previous announcement:
- Added a “Recommend us on Facebook” button as an experiment
- Disallowed issue reports with more than 5 filter subscriptions
Added support for Firefox Mobile 4.0 · 2011-03-17 14:57 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.5b.2866) added support for Firefox Mobile 4.0 (many thanks to Fabrice Desré who did much of the work). Despite the significant architectural changes everything seems to work smoothly. As far as I know, there are only two issues:
- Do-not-track support isn’t working. This isn’t going to change, with the current approach this feature would double the number of synchronous requests between content and chrome processes — not worth it.
- We might be able to reduce the number of synchronous requests by using a cache, this should make things faster. To be done soon.
Other than that, the usual limitations apply — our user interface in Firefox Mobile is very limited, do not expect the same functionality as on the desktop. In particular, only one filter subscription at a time is supported.
Update: It only took five minutes after publishing this and I found one more issue: subscription selection page doesn’t come up on first install, you have to select a subscription in extension options manually. Update2: This will be fixed in the next development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.5b.2871).
Update3 (2011-03-18): Starting with Adblock Plus 1.3.5b.2886 all the issues on the first-run page should be fixed. The page layout is more what is expected for Firefox Mobile, the selection list can actually be used and confirming selection will only close the tab and not the entire browser.
All other changes since the previous announcement are minor.
Adblock Plus for Chrome development builds will not update automatically, manual action required · 2011-03-14 10:15 by Wladimir Palant
I made a mistake when choosing the versioning scheme of Adblock Plus/Chrome development builds, as a result Adblock Plus 1.1 development builds are considered newer than Adblock Plus 1.1.1 builds and Chrome will not update the extension automatically. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there is any solution on my side other than releasing Adblock Plus 1.2 — and we are not there yet. So if you have Adblock Plus 1.1.6xx installed please save your settings, uninstall the development build, then install the current version and restore the settings. I apologize for the inconvenience caused.
Adblock Plus 1.1 for Chrome release candidate available · 2011-02-25 15:58 by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.0.26.633) is a release candidate, I hope to release Adblock Plus 1.1 early next week. Changes since the previous announcement:
- Removed “initial hiding” feature that should be unnecessary now
- Improved YouTube video ad blocking which occasionally failed because of timing issues
- Fixed hiding of document body backgrounds (regression from “proper blocking” changes, forum topic)
- Made options panel wider (forum topic)
- Fanboy’s List is now available as a choice in the Options panel