Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Improving compatibility with various application · 2009-06-04 00:44 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 1.1alpha+ development build (2009060322) has been uploaded. This development build was tested in Songbird, Prism and SeaMonkey’s browser component. Thunderbird and SeaMonkey Mail still need to be tested.

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 1.2b1, Prism 1.0b1
• 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)
• Filter composer: Added warning when adding a filter to a disabled filter group (forum topic)
• Moved all application-specific code to the overlay file corresponding with that application
• 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)
• Blockable items: Creating a filter for an item matching a disabled exception rule is possible again (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 and pasted comments before the filter that follows them (forum topic, forum topic)
• Preferences: fixed a scenario where the same filter might appear twice in the list
• 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)
• Fixed: “Disabled on …” doesn’t work correctly if the exception rule already exists but is disabled
• Fixed: Toolbar icon doesn’t show up in SeaMonkey 2.0
• Fixed: ABP fails to initialize itself in Prism
• Fixed: Indentation of some menu items of the toolbar icon’s menu too large in Songbird
• Fixed: Adding a filter subscription in Preferences that redirects to a different address causes download failure

Known issues

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

Source code revision: a85393ec0ed7

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [7]

1. steve · 2009-06-04 01:05 · #

   Firefox immediately crashes upon restart after installing this version. When I deactivate Adblock Plus in safe mode, Firefox works fine again.

   Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; de; rv:1.9.1b4) Gecko/20090423 Firefox/ 3.5b4

   adblockplus-1.1alpha.0+.2009060322.xpi

   Crash-ID
   941438b6-3903-4654-b795-0f4b12090603
   931d16bc-73e5-45c5-bb7b-dafca2090603
   0a18c427-fd0e-415d-97e7-00e9b2090603

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   The first crash is different from the other two but all of them are crashes in the JavaScript engine. I will file a Mozilla bug.

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Created https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=496199 – it would help if you could try the latest Firefox nightly from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla-1.9.1/ to see whether the issue still occurs (I couldn’t find similar crash bugs that were resolved since 3.5b4 but this is the only way to be sure).

2. steve · 2009-06-04 01:29 · #

   I generated 4 additional reports:
   bb4a6963-a827-4069-bdd5-fd2d02090603
   51bf0318-46bc-40d6-8887-da5202090603
   37a51a1b-6123-409e-bd89-cc9132090603
   b43f0b08-27c7-418f-863c-f19ed2090603

   Let me know, if you need more information.

   (btw. is the old dev-build somewhere around? I would use the old one until this gets fixed.)

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   I created a dev build that should be identical to the previous one: http://adblockplus.org/trash/adblockplus-1.1.alpha+.2009060323.xpi

3. steve · 2009-06-04 01:39 · #

   I cannot reproduce it with the lastest nightly. So it seems to be fixed.

   Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; de; rv:1.9.1pre) Gecko/20090603 Shiretoko/3.5pre

   —> RESOLVED

4. Tarun · 2009-06-05 19:58 · #

   I too was experiencing the crashes.

   Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1b4) Gecko/20090423 Firefox/3.5b4 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) – Build ID: 20090423204732

   I noticed they have a 3.5 b99 available but there’s no Windows version yet.

   The new dev build you made appears to have resolved the issue.

   Great work, keep it up. Everyone loves AdblockPlus.

5. EP · 2009-06-05 23:46 · #

   Did you check the “unsigned” win32 section for FF 3.5b99, Tarun? It’s there now that I just got it. A Windows version, instead of the unsigned Win32 version, will be available tomorrow.

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   That’s a possible release candidate build, just wait until a real release candidate comes out.

6. Marco Guarino · 2009-06-07 07:53 · #

   hey, u guys need to develope a side addon for google chrome that uses this. I used to use ff, but chrome is even faster

7. EP · 2009-06-08 23:31 · #

   sorry, NOT going to happen, Marco Guarino. If you want to block ads in Google Chrome, please check out the stuff posted at the Adsweep.org web site.

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