Adblock Plus and (a little) more

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

A new Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5+ development build (2008103009) has been uploaded. Only en-US locale is available at the moment.

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.

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

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)
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)
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)
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
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
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: 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
Fixed: Findbar in preferences dialog has no icons (Firefox 3)
Mac OS X: Preferences menu changed into toolbar to make sure it stays inside the window (forum topic)
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 image for “enabled” state (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)

Known issues

Comments cannot be moved between filter groups
~~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)

Source code revision: a989e0f4ee83

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [5]

chewey · 2008-10-30 13:13 · #

Checksums! Great!

Could you make some kind of validator available so that I can check if the file that comes out of my custom subscription creator contains the right hash?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Here it is: http://hg.mozdev.org/adblockplus/file/tip/src/validateChecksum.pl
MonztA · 2008-10-30 22:36 · #

Don’t forget to implement the Filterset.G warning. ;)

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Don’t worry, I have a to-do list – and that one is next on the list.
lovelywcm · 2008-10-31 01:25 · #

Is mozdev repository changed the property of addChecksum.pl?

It’s nice to ‘chmod 744’, and convert break format to Unix style. So can run it like ‘./addChecksum.pl’.

Currently this will get error ‘/usr/bin/perl^M: bad interpreter’.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I fixed the line breaks.
anonymous · 2008-10-31 02:52 · #

after check “menu-view-last hint” the “last hint” column show…but when open the preferences dialog open again this column is not show…

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Yes, I also noticed that it doesn’t always work reliably, that should be a Mozilla bug. Anyway, fixed: http://hg.mozdev.org/adblockplus/rev/30d71172b5e1
Simon · 2008-10-31 03:04 · #

As thanks for your continuous efforts, two nits:
1. Double-clicking a tree parent should only (un)collapse its branch, not offer to either edit the subscription or add a new rule.
2. Right-clicking the tree header should IMO allow to show/hide columns instead of displaying the context menu for the selected(?) item.

BTW: What about allowing dev builds to automatically update to newer dev builds (similar to Firefox being either on a release or alpha/beta/nightly channel)?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Fixed both issues: http://hg.mozdev.org/adblockplus/rev/329dfad886fa and http://hg.mozdev.org/adblockplus/rev/411fa33eef1a. I’ll also check whether the View menu can become the context menu for the list header.

As to a dev build update channel – I prefer it when people know what changed in the build they downloaded and how risky it is to use a particular build. However, if AMO implements this feature (they have been discussing it for a while now) I might start using it.

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