Adblock Plus and (a little) more

New Adblock Plus 1.0 release candidate · 2008-11-27 21:38 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5+ development build (2008112720) has been uploaded. Multi-language build is available but not all translations are done yet (missing strings will be in English). This is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.0, release should be tomorrow if no more issues are found.

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.

Changes

New locale: Indonesian
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 (forum topic)
Merged first run preferences extensions.adblockplus.checkedtoolbar, extensions.adblockplus.showsubscriptions, extensions.adblockplus.checkedadblockinstalled into an extensions.adblockplus.currentVersion preference
Filter subscription dialog on first run now opens in a new tab (bug 15786)
Made filter subscription dialog warn if Filterset.G is installed and suggest automatic uninstall
Removed Adblock warning as a separate question, made filter subscription dialog warn if Adblock is installed and suggest automatic uninstall
Subscription dialog on first start shows up even if other extensions already added a filter subscription, only existing downloadable filter subscriptions disable the dialog
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 (forum topic)
Blockable items: Added “Copy filter” item to the context menu (forum topic)
Blockable items: Multiple selection and copying of multiple addresses/filters now possible (forum topic)
Blockable items: Added “Select all” item to the context menu
Blockable items: Filters can now be disabled and re-enabled from the context menu (forum topic)
Blockable items: Added “Size” column (hidden by default)
Blockable items: Added element size to the tooltip
Blockable items: Sort by “State” column by default (blocked items first)
Blockable items: Filter is shown in a different color for element hiding hits (forum topic)
Fixed: Subscriptions are sometimes loaded from browser cache
For subscription downloads, a comment “! Checksum: abcd” is now interpreted and files with wrong checksum are rejected (forum topic, reference implementation to add checksums)
Added hidden preference extensions.adblockplus.savestats to allow turning off hit statistics (useful if patterns.ini is put into a version control system) (bug 18650)
Added support for private browsing mode in Firefox 3.1, hit statistics are disabled automatically
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
Added support for Prism 0.9 (forum topic)
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
Fixed: Element hiding hits aren’t always registered in Firefox 3
Fixed: Exception rules don’t always apply to element hiding in Firefox 3 (bug 20034)
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
Preferences: Made new “View” menu the context menu for list header
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 (forum topic)
Preferences: Filter export inserts a checksum comment into the file (forum topic)
Preferences: Pasting filters that contain spaces (especially comments) now possible (bug 18920)
Preferences: Groups containing user-defined filters can now be disabled as well” (forum topic)
Preferences: Removed “Add filter” dummy from the list (forum topic)
Preferences: Comments can now be inserted in all filter groups, not only “Advertisement filters”
Preferences: Comments can be moved to other filter groups via drag&drop
Preferences: Comments now always stay before the same filter (or end of the group), regardless of sorting
Preferences: Dragging comments is even possible when the list is sorted
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: For invalid filters, the tooltip now explains why they are invalid
Preferences: Removed regular expressions warning and corresponding preference extensions.adblockplus.warnregexp (warning in composer and exclamation mark are enough) (forum topic)
Preferences: Removed dropdown list from filter editor (forum topic)
Preferences: Filter changes (with exception of element hiding) no longer apply immediately to the “current” window, this is only done for the composer (forum topic)
Preferences: “Add subscription” now opens a list of subscriptions instead of the “custom subscription” dialog
Preferences: Added a way to disable/enable filters and subscriptions from context menu
Preferences: Changed names for groups of user-defined filters (forum topic)
Preferences: Group/subscription titles use bold text now (forum topic)
Fixed: Findbar in preferences dialog has no icons (Firefox 3)
Fixed: Clicking twice on the Enabled column starts filter editor
Mac OS X: Preferences menu changed into toolbar to make sure it stays inside the window (forum topic)
About Adblock Plus: Made homepage link localizable (and different for German/French locales, bug 17136)
Fixed: Object tabs show up on print (bug 19405)
New options $third-party and $~third-party restrict filters to third-party/first-party requests (forum topic)
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 (bug 18650)
Preferences: using more obvious images for the “Enabled” column (forum topic, 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)
Added “Adblock Plus: Blockable Items” to the View menu in Firefox (View – Toolbars menu in SeaMonkey)
Renamed Tools menu item into “Adblock Plus Preferences”
Fixed: “getBoxObjectFor() is deprecated” warning in error console (bug 19126)

Known issues

~~patterns.ini backups are not created~~
~~Preferences: Deleting a filter via keyboard isn’t possible on Mac (forum topic)~~

Source code revision: 7564f434f9ec

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [6]

Jordan K. · 2008-11-28 00:05 · #

I do not know if it is possible to fix this or if this is a limitation of the current implementation in Mac, but navigating trough the menu in Adblock Plus preferences is a but painful. When you click on a menu item (e.g. “help”), you get a drop down list (normal behavior). But when you want to switch to the next menu item (e.g. “options”), you have to click twice to open the new menu. Normally the list should switch when hover over another menu item, without clicking.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Yes, that is a limitation I cannot do much about – either the menu is on the top of the screen (and then most users don’t notice it) or it is inside the window but its usability sucks. “Organize Bookmarks” in Firefox has a similar problem but at least they have the resources to make the menu not look like a menu.
asdf · 2008-11-30 00:25 · #

These builds seem to be working faster and faster. ;p
tlu · 2008-11-30 20:56 · #

Wladimir, the new version is very nice. However, it seems that chewey’s proposal from http://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1437&sid=99d858ce360ee8d46232d3bfd7f3c601 is not included. It’s a pity ..

Greetings,

T.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Considering that suggestion isn’t exactly trivial. Each filter subscription on the list of recommendation is supposed to be sufficient on its own – EasyPrivacy however is a supplemental filter subscription. So this will require significant changes to subscriptions UI – which I want to do, just not for this release.
Ömer Fadıl USTA · 2008-12-03 05:04 · #

Hello Again
Adblock plus 1.0 is not compatible with newest version of Firefox ( Mozilla/5.0 Gecko/20081202 Minefield/3.2a1pre )

Could you test and add support for Firefox 3.2.* ?
Thanks for everything

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

No, I cannot. 3.2a1pre is not on AMO’s list of allowed versions (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/pages/appversions). I’ll file a bug to get it added.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Actually, that bug is already there: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=467378
Ömer Fadıl USTA · 2008-12-04 19:31 · #

Hello again #467378 is fixed now :) So could you add support for
3.2a1pre ?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I did already, a few hours ago.
Ömer Fadıl USTA · 2008-12-05 02:31 · #

Thanks

Commenting is closed for this article.