Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Flexible anchors and separator placeholders · 2009-05-07 14:42 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 1.1.alpha+ development build (2009050712) 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 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)
• 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
• 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
• 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)
• Blocked redirects cause a message in Error Console (“The async request failed because it was aborted by some user action”)
• Redirects sometimes don’t show up in Blockable items (particularly on YouTube)

Source code revision: d4b92461e3ac

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [7]

1. Marijo · 2009-05-07 15:10 · #

   When I go to chrome://adblockplus/content/errors.html, I get this message:
   Warning:
   Selector expected. Ruleset ignored due to bad selector.
   Location: <snipped>
   Where does this warning come from? ABP itself or from one of the filter lists?

   Setup:
   Firefox 3.0.10
   EasyList, EasyPrivacy, EasyList German from May, 7th.

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Yes, I was just about to report this one myself – it comes from an incorrect element hiding rule in EasyList Germany (“tutorials.de##a(target=_blank)(href*=.terrashop.de/)”).

2. MonztA · 2009-05-07 15:16 · #

   @Marijo
   For your information: EasyList Germany already contains the regular EasyList.

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Not necessarily. Only if it is the combined “Easylist Germany + EasyList” filter subscription. The one from ares2.at is EasyList Germany only.

3. Marijo · 2009-05-07 15:28 · #

   @Wladimir: Thanks for confirmation!

   @MontzA: The EasyList Germany is smaller in file size than EasyList itself, so I assumed the EasyList Germany is not cumulative.

   Where do I find this combined version?

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Here: http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions (or simply Filters / Add Filter Subscription in preferences, it is currently the second entry in the list)

4. Marijo · 2009-05-07 15:31 · #

   Found it! :)
   The combined version is available at:
   http://adblockplus.org/de/subscriptions

5. Fox · 2009-05-08 18:15 · #

   I did made these filters, i know these both are invalid: ||.ru ||^.ru
   does not block anything, as far as i tested.

   ||*.ru
   That block these both:
   http://www.google.ru/
   http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.google.ru/

   So i wanna adblock to report that those are invalid, can that be done.
   Or then, i wanna filter like ||.ru or ||*.ru
   only block all .ru domains: like google.ru, and not these:
   http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.google.ru/

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   The first two aren’t strictly invalid. First of them will match “http://foo..ru/”, the second will match “http://foo.+.ru/”. While domain names like this don’t exist, they could exist in theory.

   As to “||*.ru” – it is the same thing as with “|*http://”, you can create a filter like this and it will block something but that’s probably not what you want. But that’s a logic mistake, do you really expect Adblock Plus to detect and report those?

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Note also that filter composer won’t let you create any of these rules. Even if you enter a custom pattern like “.ru” or “*.ru”, flexible anchor option will be disabled. If you enter your filters manually however you should know what you are doing.

6. Fox · 2009-05-08 19:47 · #

   WP: “But that’s a logic mistake, do you really expect Adblock Plus to detect and report those?”

   Yes, because those filters do not make much sense.
   But because that Filter composer do not suggest those, then this issue is not that big.

7. Fox · 2009-05-08 22:17 · #

   ||ru is correct filter if i wanna block all .ru domains?
   Sure it’s too short, but it seems to work.

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Better “||ru^”, otherwise it will match rumba.com as well.

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