Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Added support for Prism 0.9 · 2008-11-20 23:04 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5+ development build (2008112021) has been uploaded. Multi-language build is available but not all translations are done yet (missing strings will be in English).

Installation

https://adblockplus.org/devbuilds/

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.

Changes

  • Added new filter composer dialog that is opened to add a new filter
  • Moved warning that Adblock Plus is disabled from preferences to composer dialog, made it possible to enable with a single click (forum topic)
  • Merged first run preferences extensions.adblockplus.checkedtoolbar, extensions.adblockplus.showsubscriptions, extensions.adblockplus.checkedadblockinstalled into an extensions.adblockplus.currentVersion preference
  • Filter subscription dialog on first run now opens in a new tab (bug 15786)
  • Made filter subscription dialog warn if Filterset.G is installed and suggest automatic uninstall
  • Removed Adblock warning as a separate question, made filter subscription dialog warn if Adblock is installed and suggest automatic uninstall
  • Subscription dialog on first start shows up even if other extensions already added a filter subscription, only existing downloadable filter subscriptions disable the dialog
  • Blockable items: Changed default action for blocked items to “add exception rule” instead of “edit filter”
  • Blockable items: Tooltip now shows the filter source in addition to the filter itself (forum topic)
  • Blockable items: Added “Copy filter” item to the context menu (forum topic)
  • Blockable items: Multiple selection and copying of multiple addresses/filters now possible (forum topic)
  • Blockable items: Added “Select all” item to the context menu
  • Blockable items: Filters can now be disabled and re-enabled from the context menu (forum topic)
  • Blockable items: Added “Size” column (hidden by default)
  • Blockable items: Added element size to the tooltip
  • Blockable items: Sort by “State” column by default (blocked items first)
  • Blockable items: Filter is shown in a different color for element hiding hits (forum topic)
  • Fixed: Subscriptions are sometimes loaded from browser cache
  • For subscription downloads, a comment “! Checksum: abcd” is now interpreted and files with wrong checksum are rejected (forum topic, reference implementation to add checksums)
  • Added hidden preference extensions.adblockplus.savestats to allow turning off hit statistics (useful if patterns.ini is put into a version control system) (bug 18650)
  • Added support for private browsing mode in Firefox 3.1, hit statistics are disabled automatically
  • 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
  • Added support for Prism 0.9 (forum topic)
  • Cleaned up some backwards compatibility hacks
  • Removed ancient drag&drop handling code (not discoverable and not advertised anywhere)
  • 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
  • Fixed: Element hiding hits aren’t always registered in Firefox 3
  • Fixed: Exception rules don’t always apply to element hiding in Firefox 3 (bug 20034)
  • 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
  • Preferences: Made new “View” menu the context menu for list header
  • Fixed: Dates in Preferences window would sometimes use wrong character encoding (bug 441370)
  • Fixed: “Edit filter in effect” might select the filter in a disabled subscription even though it exists in an enabled one (forum topic)
  • Preferences: Filter export inserts a checksum comment into the file (forum topic)
  • Preferences: Pasting filters that contain spaces (especially comments) now possible (bug 18920)
  • Preferences: Groups containing user-defined filters can now be disabled as well” (forum topic)
  • Preferences: Removed “Add filter” dummy from the list (forum topic)
  • Preferences: Comments can now be inserted in all filter groups, not only “Advertisement filters”
  • About dialog: Made it possible to select and copy version number
  • Made sure filter composer warns the user on regexps and too short filters
  • Preferences: Showing exclamation mark for too short filters as well now
  • Preferences: Added a tooltip explaining the meaning of the exclamation mark
  • Preferences: For invalid filters, the tooltip now explains why they are invalid
  • Preferences: Removed regular expressions warning and corresponding preference extensions.adblockplus.warnregexp (warning in composer and exclamation mark are enough) (forum topic)
  • Preferences: Removed dropdown list from filter editor (forum topic)
  • Preferences: Filter changes (with exception of element hiding) no longer apply immediately to the “current” window, this is only done for the composer (forum topic)
  • Preferences: “Add subscription” now opens a list of subscriptions instead of the “custom subscription” dialog
  • Preferences: Added a way to disable/enable filters and subscriptions from context menu
  • Preferences: Changed names for groups of user-defined filters (forum topic)
  • Preferences: Group/subscription titles use bold text now (forum topic)
  • Fixed: Findbar in preferences dialog has no icons (Firefox 3)
  • Fixed: Clicking twice on the Enabled column starts filter editor
  • Mac OS X: Preferences menu changed into toolbar to make sure it stays inside the window (forum topic)
  • About Adblock Plus: Made homepage link localizable (and different for German/French locales, bug 17136)
  • Fixed: Object tabs show up on print (bug 19405)
  • New options $third-party and $~third-party restrict filters to third-party/first-party requests (forum topic)
  • Subscription download: Next attempt after failed download is after one day now rather than after one hour (preference extensions.adblockplus.subscriptions_fallbackerrors adjusted accordingly)
  • Fallback request can now disable automatic downloads for subscriptions that are no longer available
  • Fixed: Preferences dialog doesn’t immediately display changes to “downloaded automatically” status
  • Fixed: Blockable items list header is hidden in fullscreen mode
  • Preferences: “Reset filter statistics” now resets “Last hit” as well (bug 18650)
  • Preferences: using more obvious images for the “Enabled” column (forum topic, forum topic)
  • Fixed: “Disable on this page only” won’t work for pages with query string
  • Significantly reduced the time for reading patterns list from disk as well as for writing it back
  • Reduced the amount of memory used for long filter lists
  • Made sure patterns file isn’t overwritten unless write was successful (bug 16488)
  • Added “Adblock Plus: Blockable Items” to the View menu in Firefox (View – Toolbars menu in SeaMonkey)
  • Renamed Tools menu item into “Adblock Plus Preferences”
  • Fixed: “getBoxObjectFor() is deprecated” warning in error console (bug 19126)

Known issues

  • Comments cannot be moved between filter groups
  • Subscription dialog on first start doesn’t play nice with session restore
  • In Firefox 3.1 nightlies between 20081112 and 20081119 some scripts are invisible to Adblock Plus (bug 464754)
  • Blockable items: “Re-enable filter” not working for subscription filters

Source code revision: 72160b613c58

Tags:

Comment [3]

  1. davide ficano · 2008-11-22 10:14 · #

    Prism support? Simply awesome

    thanks

  2. Gail · 2009-10-12 21:57 · #

    Is there a version of Adblock Plus that will install in the Linux version of Prism?
    Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009090217 prism/0.8

    Attempting to install gives an error that Prism is an incompatible version.

    I would really really like to get Adblock Plus to work with this version of Prism for Linux but don’t know how to do that. This is the most up to date version of Prism available in the software repositories.

    Reply from Wladimir Palant:

    This has nothing to do with Linux – Prism 0.8 is pretty outdated and no longer supported. I can only suggest you get Prism 1.0b1 from http://prism.mozilla.com/downloads/1.0b1/ (1.0b2 isn’t available for Linux for some reason).

  3. Gail · 2009-10-12 23:21 · #

    Thanks for the reply Wladimir.

    I messed around with the release candidate of Prism for Linux (1.01b.1) and it definitely has issues on my computer. I cannot get a Prism app to run with a status bar which is what it takes to install Adblock Plus or any addon for that matter.

    I really wish that Linux wasn’t at the bottom of everybody’s priority list for updates in everything, but that is a simple fact of how the Linux world works.

    Sorry about the rant, no fault of yours of course and Adblock Plus has worked absolutely beautifully in every platform I have ever installed it in.

    Thanks again, for the reply and for the excellent work you’ve done with this addon.

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