Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Improved data format in Chrome · 2011-10-26 10:21 by Wladimir Palant

Note: The changes described here caused a critical regression in the non-experimental builds (blocking essentially disabled), sorry about that. This issue has been fixed in Adblock Plus 1.1.4.708.

Adblock Plus for Google Chrome 1.1.4.705 underwent a major rearchitecturing effort. Main goal was to use the same data format as Adblock Plus in Firefox, a number of other areas have been touched as well. The expected changes:

Google Chrome 9 and above is required now (previously Google Chrome 6 was still supported, at least theoretically).
Local Storage now only contains options, the actual filter data is stored in files on disk. One side-effect of this change is that quota-related errors should be gone. Locating the files on disk isn’t trivial but they can be viewed under filesystem:chrome-extension://ldcecbkkoecffmfljeihcmifjjdoepkn/persistent/ in the browser (filesystem:chrome-extension://cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb/persistent/ for the release version). File format is identical to patterns.ini in Firefox.
There should no longer be hangs when some user interface features are used. If you still see a hang after some button is clicked or similar please let us know.
Downloading of filter subscriptions works the same as in Firefox now. This means among other things that EasyList downloads will be distributed to the various mirrors instead of being limited to the main download mirror. Only limitation: filter subscriptions that change location by means of an HTTP redirect (301) cannot be recognized.
Some improvements to the Options user interface have been implemented. This is most noticeable in “Filter lists” tab: it now only displays the subscriptions that have been added. More subscriptions can be added by clicking “Add filter subscription” – this works same as in Firefox now, also the list of recommendations is identical (recommendations matching browser’s user interface locale are highlighted).
Messaging around “Easy create filter” feature has been simplified. There should be no visible effects of this change.

If you notice that something doesn’t work as expected please let us know.

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Tags: adblock plus chrome development builds

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