Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Removed "Hide placeholders of blocked elements" option · 2014-12-11 15:49 by Sebastian Noack

Disabling the “Hide placeholders of blocked elements” option in the menu (Firefox) or in the “General” section of the options page (Chrome, Opera, Safari) had the effect that placeholders were shown for elements which didn’t load because of Adblock Plus. The purpose of this feature was to see when something was blocked on a webpage. However, the results couldn’t be relied on because it didn’t have any effect on hidden or generally invisible elements. Also, in Chrome, Opera and Safari there is now the icon badge indicating the number of blocked requests (coming to Firefox as well soon).

Therefore, we decided to remove the option from the user interface (issue 1670 and 1671). This change is now visible in the development builds (Adblock Plus 2.6.6.3881 for Firefox and Adblock Plus 1.8.8.1285 for Chrome, Opera and Safari) and will be included in the upcoming releases, i.e. Adblock Plus 2.6.7 for Firefox as well as Adblock Plus 1.8.9 for Chrome, Opera and Safari.

So far the option has only been removed from the user interface, and you can still have placeholders show up:

On Firefox

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and press Enter
2. Search for extensions.adblockplus.fastcollapse
3. Double-click the item in the list (the “Value” column should show true now)

On Chrome and Opera

1. Click the ABP icon
2. Choose “Options”
3. Open the JavaScript console
   1. Windows/Linux: Ctrl + Shift + J
   2. OS X: Cmd + Alt + J
4. Type “Prefs.hidePlaceholders = false” and press Enter

On Safari

1. Open Safari preferences (Cmd + ,)
2. Switch to the “Advanced” tab
3. Enable “Show Develop menu in menu bar”
4. Click the ABP icon
5. Choose “Options”
6. Open the JavaScript console (Cmd + Alt + C)
7. Type “Prefs.hidePlaceholders = false” and press Enter

To the install page

Tags: adblock plus adblock plus chrome

Comment [1]

1. redwolfe_98 · 2015-01-15 02:13 · #

   the article is kind of confusing, to me.. i want to keep things simple..

   if i want placeholders to be hidden, what should the setting for “extensions.adblockplus.fastcollapse” be? should it be set to “true” or “false”?

   i would think that it should be set to “true”, to hide the placeholders..

   in my “about:config”, the default setting for “extensions.adblockplus.fastcollapse” seems to be “false”, where placeholders would be displayed?

   i don’t know what is going on, why the option to hide placeholders was removed, or if they still can be hidden, or not, but i am not going to be happy if i have placeholders splashed all over my screen..

   Reply from Sebastian Noack:

   In order to have placeholders hidden, extensions.adblockplus.fastcollapse must be set to false. This is the default. So if you haven’t changed that option, you shouldn’t see placeholders. If you still do, it’s an unrelated issue. Feel free to ask for help in our forum.

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