Adblock Plus and (a little) more
Some improvements to redirect tracking · 2009-04-28 16:06 by Wladimir Palant
A new Adblock Plus 1.1.alpha+ development build (2009042814) has been uploaded.
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 1.1, Prism 1.0
- Added handling of redirects, the redirect address now shows up in “Blockable items” as well and can be blocked
- 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 - 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
- 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
Known issues
- Current Element Hiding Helper version won’t work
- Blocked redirects cause a message in Error Console (“The async request failed because it was aborted by some user action”)
Redirects are not blocked for framesPage doesn’t finish loading if redirects of scripts are blockedPreferences: Disabled filters are sometimes marked as slow (forum topic)Preferences: Hit column is too small by default, contents get cut off (forum topic)
Source code revision: 76f4d97c527f
Comment [7]
Commenting is closed for this article.
lovelywcm · 2009-05-03 21:49 · #
Found a bug at fist(clean profile) installation.
Console output:
Adblock Plus: Failed to read filters from file /home/***/.mozilla/firefox/***/adblockplus/patterns.ini: [Exception… “Component returned failure code: 0×80520012 (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND) [nsIFileInputStream.init]” nsresult: “0×80520012 (NS_ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND)” location: “JS frame :: chrome://adblockplus/content/filterStorage.js :: anonymous :: line 369” data: no]
Click the tool-bar icon: no response;
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
This error message is expected on a clean installation – patterns.ini is really not there. No response to the toolbar icon is an issue however, probably caused by the Skype extension.
lovelywcm · 2009-05-04 03:26 · #
>No response to the toolbar icon is an issue
>however, probably caused by the Skype extension.
>
Oh, in my report. It’s because the exception of filterStorage.js, no problem after a restart. But it’s really confused to people who use this extension for the first time.
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
How would people see that exception? It is going to console, usually you won’t see it. Unless you start Firefox on Linux from console or open Console.app on Mac – both things that people are pretty unlikely to do.
lovelywcm · 2009-05-04 04:04 · #
“redirect tracking” seems don’t work in some case.
for an example:
In youtube, “youtube.com/get_video” will be redirected to “googlevideo.com” where is the video really located.
Add a filter with “googlevideo.com” to ABP, I can still watch video in youtube.
URLs concerned with “googlevideo.com” also didn’t displayed in “blockable items” window. But the browser said it is loading something from googlevideo.com. Using some tools we can find out that “youtube.com/get_video” has been indeed redirected.
Console output:
Adblock Plus: Unexpected error in policy.onChannelRedirect: TypeError: invalid ‘in’ operand node
sometimes:
Adblock Plus: Unexpected error in policy.onChannelRedirect: TypeError: wnd is null
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
I just tried that on http://adblockplus.org/en/. If I click “Play” on that video, both youtube.com/get_video and googlevideo.com show up in the list of blockable items. If I block googlevideo.com and try again, the corresponding entries shows up as blocked and the video says “an error occurred” – seems to be working.
lovelywcm · 2009-05-04 18:23 · #
>How would people see that exception? It is going
>to console, usually you won’t see it.
>
It’s not only an exception message. But due to this exception, it breaks many things.
for an example:
no response when click the tool bar button;
blank context menu;
…
You may want to try it by yourself.
My user-agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; zh-CN; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042807 Iceweasel/3.0.9 (Debian-3.0.9-1)
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
As I said before – if there is a toolbar bug on first installation, that’s an entirely different issue and has nothing to do with that exception whatsoever. I’ll check it out.
lovelywcm · 2009-05-04 18:49 · #
Indeed. I copied the pattern files to a clean profile before install devbuild. Exception message has gone while toolbar issue remains.
MonztA · 2009-05-05 00:22 · #
“I just tried that on http://adblockplus.org/en/. If I click “Play” on that video, both youtube.com/get_video and googlevideo.com show up in the list of blockable items.”
OK, googlevideo.com shows up for me too in this case but is it normal that there is no googlevideo.com in the list of blockable items when watching a video directly on youtube?
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
You are right, something is wrong there. It shows up in ABP Watcher, even as blocked. But it isn’t really being blocked.
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
Thanks, fixed: http://hg.mozdev.org/adblockplus/rev/e5d30f5793b1
Mark Protsik · 2009-07-15 02:14 · #
I get this error message associated with AdblockPlus. Note: the adblock preferences no longer open except in the addons window, and there the subscriptions list is now blank. This occurred when AdblockPlus was updated to version 1.1
Error: policy is not defined
Source File: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/MProtsik/Application%20Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/zod0huhj.default/extensions/%7Bd10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d%7D/components/nsAdblockPlus.js
Line: 212
Reply from Wladimir Palant:
This seems to be a follow-up error, you are probably not seeing the original error. Please type “chrome://adblockplus/content/errors.html” into the address bar, this should bring up all error messages. Also, feel free to move this discussion into the forum, should work better there (no need to register, just click “create topic”).