Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Filterset.G warning added · 2008-11-01 14:36 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5+ development build (2008110113) 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)
Made filter subscription dialog warn if Filterset.G 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)
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
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)
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)
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 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: Hit count and Last hit columns are not right-aligned~~
~~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)~~
Filterset.G warning doesn’t pop up after upgrade from Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5
Whitelisting rules apply to entire pages by default, even the ones not starting with “http://”
Blockable items: sorting by “State” column takes precedence over user’s chosen sort order

Source code revision: 50d4155fe2a4

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [3]

Ares2 · 2008-11-01 15:12 · #

About the Filterset.G warning: I see that it is included in the subscription dialog. Do you really think that’s a good idea? I tested 2 common cases:

a) ABP 0.7.5.* and Filterset.G are already installed, then I updated to the latest dev-build and nothing happens after the restart. Is this intentional? From what I read in the description, the dialog should show up if there is just Filterset.G installed?

b) As soon as the new version of ABP is available on AMO, everyone who sets up a new profile is going to install the new version of ABP and Filterset.G at the same time. After a restart, 4! windows pop up: 2 from Filterset.G on top, the addons manager and the subscription dialog. I think there are many people who will not read the subscription dialog carefully in this case, just clicking cancel and keep using Filterset.G.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

There should be two more changes in the release:

* The pref that currently triggers the subscription dialog on first start will be replaced. So anybody who doesn’t have a filter subscription (and Filterset.G doesn’t count as a filter subscription) will get this subscription dialog.

* The subscription dialog should open in a new tab on first start so that it isn’t that easy to overlook (and less annoying).
MonztA · 2008-11-01 15:30 · #

I think there should be a warning too somewhere when you open ABP.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

There should be two more changes in the release:

* The pref that currently triggers the subscription dialog on first start will be replaced. So anybody who doesn’t have a filter subscription (and Filterset.G doesn’t count as a filter subscription) will get this subscription dialog.

* The subscription dialog should open in a new tab on first start so that it isn’t that easy to overlook (and less annoying).
MonztA · 2008-11-01 16:28 · #

I have the list of blockable elements always sorted by type. With this build it doesn’t stay saved. It is always sorted by the state.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Ok, sloppy testing on my part. Yes, that needs to be fixed.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Fixed: http://hg.mozdev.org/adblockplus/rev/c9d19ab95269

Commenting is closed for this article.