Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Improving startup times · 2011-02-15 18:36 by Wladimir Palant

I implemented significant changes on the Adblock Plus core that allow the current development build (Adblock Plus 1.3.5a2.2826) to cache much of the data required at runtime on disk (cache.js file in the adblockplus directory). Instead of reading in patterns.ini file on startup Adblock Plus will now only read the cache file (requires in my tests approximately 35% of the old startup time). It will still load patterns.ini when its data is required, typically when the first page loads. For me this only requires 40% of the old startup time however because the data structures do not need to be rebuilt. So even if your browser doesn’t start with a blank page you should see around 25% speedup. And much of the delay will happen after the browser window opens. The new approach might have caused issues, please post a comment here or create a topic in the forum if you notice any.

Other changes since Adblock Plus 1.3.3 release:

• Special icon state for “whitelisted” webpages has been removed, Adblock Plus shows up as disabled now (forum topic).
• Corruption of patterns.ini file should be less likely now. If a corrupted patterns.ini is recognized a backup will be restored automatically.
• Added support for Do-Not-Track header, will be activated automatically if a subscription like EasyPrivacy is added (forum topic).
• Element hiding stylesheet is now written on disk as elemhide.css, this is both faster and more memory-effective.
• Keyboard shortcut for Preferences is now Ctrl-Shift-F in Firefox 4 (Cmd-Shift-O on OS X) because Ctrl-Shift-E is already taken.
• Fixed: Disabling filters from the list of blockable items won’t actually disable the filter in Firefox 3.6
• Fixed: Selecting a filter (via blockable items’ “Edit filter in effect”) in an already open Preferences dialog doesn’t work

To the install page

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [2]

1. Marijo · 2011-02-15 20:24 · #

   No need for a stop watch! The decrease in start-up time is noticeable right away. Thanks a lot!

2. DavidC · 2011-02-18 13:05 · #

   The difference is very noticeable – excellent work, Wladimir.

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