Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Experimental Weave support · 2009-05-18 11:46 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 1.1.alpha+ development build (2009051809) has been uploaded.

Installation

https://adblockplus.org/devbuilds/

Changes

• Dropped compatibility with old browsers and cleaned up the code, now requiring at least: Firefox 3.0.9, SeaMonkey 2.0b1, Thunderbird 3.0b3, Songbird 1.1, Prism 1.0
• Added handling of redirects, the redirect address now shows up in “Blockable items” as well and can be blocked
• Added experimental Weave support to synchronize Adblock Plus filters and preferences across computers/profiles. Limitations:
  • Currently, only Weave 0.3.2 is supported. Weave 0.3.0 will not work, future Weave releases will most likely not work either.
  • Only filters are synced, not their position however. Synchronized profiles will have the same filters but might show them in a different order.
  • Currently, there is no mechanism to ensure that future Adblock Plus versions can change the data format without causing data loss
  • Syncing Adblock Plus data is enabled by default, disabling is only possible by changing extensions.weave.engine.abpdata preference manually. This will be fixed in Weave 0.4, this option will be available in Weave preferences there.
• Added explicit support for blocking fonts (@font-type CSS directive in Firefox 3.5)
• Added support for flexible anchors at start of filter: ||example.com/foo/ will match http://example.com/foo/bar and http://test.example.com/foo/bar but not http://badexample.com/foo/bar or http://evilsite.com/?http://example.com/foo/bar (forum topic)
• Added support for ^ character that will match a single separator character or end of address (forum topic)
• Filter composer: Added flexible anchors as an option (“at the beginning of domain name”) (forum topic)
• Filter composer: Added “example.com^” as fourth suggestion (forum topic)
• Filter composer: Added warning when adding a filter to a disabled filter group (forum topic)
• Started refactoring of browser integration code which runs in its own context now
• Changed the way “add subscription” links work, these can now only be triggered by user clicking a link
• Added diagnostic page displaying all errors related to Adblock Plus: chrome://adblockplus/content/errors.html
• Blockable items: Added “document source” column (domain name to be used for the $domain filter option, forum topic)
• Preferences: “slow filter” warning is now a separate list column which can be used for sorting
• Preferences: “close” button moved to the right side of the filter editor, made the button use Firefox 3 look
• Preferences: improved position calculations for the filter editor, no longer makes the text position change
• Preferences: using browser’s real find bar now instead of faking it
• Preferences: fixed slowdown when enabling/disabling many element hiding rules
• Preferences: insert imported comments before the filter that follows them (forum topic)
• Fixed: ABP icon updates its status every two seconds, hogs CPU time
• Fixed: opening Preferences in current Firefox nightlies selects wrong tree row (worked around bug 489881)
• Fixed: detection of background images breaks the context menu in Firefox nightlies
• Fixed: an error is reported to console on first run (patterns.ini not found)

Known issues

• Current Element Hiding Helper release won’t work (EHH development build is available)

Source code revision: 8adfebc22a90

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [5]

1. lovelywcm · 2009-05-18 15:24 · #

   What about the “clean profile installation” issue?

   I have made a screenshot to show what happened:

   http://lh6.ggpht.com/_RtqRASEBtF8/ShFD8-85E5I/AAAAAAAABcw/poGQViMQIj0/abp.png

   This issue can be reproduced:
   Iceweasel @ Debian GNU/Linux &
   Firefox @ Windows xp

   Both are the latest version.

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   I reproduced this issue, will look into it.

2. Adblock Plus Fan · 2009-05-23 01:46 · #

   The whitelist options in abp-toolbar-popup doesn’t seem to synchronize properly if you disable the whitelist from preferences window.

   Shiretoko 3.5pre
   WinXP SP3

   To reproduce:
   1) Click “Disable on adblockplus.org” to create @@||adblockplus.org^$document filter.
   2) Disable the filter from preferences window.

   Expected:
   “Disable on adblockplus.org” option to be unchecked.

   Bug:
   “Disable on adblockplus.org” remains checked.

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Yes, this doesn’t consider disabled filters properly, needs to be fixed.

3. Adblock Plus Fan · 2009-05-23 01:47 · #

   Further issue:
   ABP creates double instance of @@||adblockplus.org^$document

   To reproduce:
   1) Click “Disable on adblockplus.org” to create @@||adblockplus.org^$document filter.
   2) Disable the filter from preferences window.
   3) Click “Disable on adblockplus.org”
   4) Click “Disable on adblockplus.org”

   Bug:
   Two instances of @@||adblockplus.org^$document filter found in preferences window.

4. chewey · 2009-05-27 03:40 · #

   JFTR: “install script not found” on SM 1.1.x

   I’m not really complaining though, I know what a pain SM 1.1 is, and use SM 2 for most of my “serious surfing” for quite some time now…

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   “Dropped compatibility with old browsers and cleaned up the code, now requiring at least: Firefox 3.0.9, SeaMonkey 2.0b1, Thunderbird 3.0b3, Songbird 1.1, Prism 1.0”

   See also http://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3828.

5. chewey · 2009-05-27 19:52 · #

   Oh, I missed that, thanks. Completely understandable :->

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