Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Fixing the obvious bugs · 2008-10-28 21:22 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5+ development build (2008102820) 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
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
Blockable items: Added “Copy filter” item to the context menu
Blockable items: Multiple selection and copying of multiple addresses/filters now possible
Blockable items: Added “Select all” item to the context menu
Blockable items: Filters can now be disabled and re-enabled from the context menu
Fixed: Subscriptions are sometimes loaded from browser cache
Added hidden preference extensions.adblockplus.savestats to allow turning off hit statistics (useful if patterns.ini is put into a version control system)
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
Preferences: Pasting filters that contain spaces (especially comments) now possible (bug 18920)
Preferences: Groups containing user-defined filters can now be disabled as well”
Preferences: Removed “Add filter” dummy from the list
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: Removed regular expressions warning and corresponding preference extensions.adblockplus.warnregexp (warning in composer and exclamation mark are enough)
Preferences: Removed dropdown list from filter editor
Preferences: Filter changes (with exception of element hiding) no longer apply immediately to the “current” window, this is only done for the composer
Preferences: “Add subscription” now opens a list of subscriptions instead of the “custom subscription” dialog
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
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
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
~~Elements matching whitelist filters are still blocked and collapsed~~
~~Toolbar icon tooltip counts whitelisted elements as blocked~~
~~When filters are reapplied after a new filter is added, whitelisted elements are ignored~~
~~Enabling/disabling filters in Preferences dialog is only respected after a browser restart~~
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

Source code revision: 1c6b880af682

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [8]

Ares2 · 2008-10-28 21:44 · #

I just had to find another one ;-)

This was probably already present in the old dev build: If you move the mouse on the free space in ABP prefernces (for example if you don’t have any filters there) you get the regex/short-filter tooltip.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Yep, and I already fixed this one (though not in this dev build). Thanks anyway :)
Ares2 · 2008-10-28 21:58 · #

Now that I know how to make one on my own (thanks to your instructions), I don’t have to wait any more. :D
rick752 · 2008-10-29 17:22 · #

I noticed that element-hiding does not show up in the blocked items anymore. I used to be able to “OK” the Prefs window to get them to show …. but not anymore. I also don’t think the dev even shows them the first time either.
Is this because of the design … or just an oversight?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I guess that’s a bug. However, this will need more thorough fixing anyway.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Ok, I see now – element hiding isn’t reset unless something actually changed. So you have to add a new element hiding filter or disable an element hiding filter.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Tested a little – no, seems to be no bug here. Element hiding filters show up if something changed. Of course they should always show up but that’s a different issue.
Ares2 · 2008-10-29 17:41 · #

I can see them again after a browser restart.
rick752 · 2008-10-29 18:26 · #

It doesn’t work like it did before now, but I found an easier way to show the element-hiding rules. All you have to do it disable and re-enable ABP (middle click the ABP logo). This works.
Ares2 · 2008-10-29 18:28 · #

Good to know, thx. :)
malte · 2008-10-29 19:16 · #

Filters in subscriptions you’ve just added are displayed as too short until you hit “Apply”. Also, filters in disabled subscriptions have the warning (not immediately after disabling them, but after a restart).

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Heh, I thought I fixed that issue – guess not. Thanks for letting me know.
rick752 · 2008-11-02 03:59 · #

Another thing I have noticed is that general whitelisting is created WITHOUT an http:// beginning (that was the way it had to work before) .

Normally, a domain whitelist needs something like:
@@http://video.nytimes.com/
.. to work.

But I noticed that:
@@/video.nytimes.com/*
… will whitelist the whole domain … not just the individual addresses that contain /video.nytimes.com/
.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Actually, it wasn’t meant to work like that – you need to explicitly specify $document for page whitelisting (or http:// to imply $document). So that’s a bug to be fixed, thanks for noticing it.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Fixed: http://hg.mozdev.org/adblockplus/rev/6a5eb89c59d2

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