Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Whitelisting element hiding rules: fixed · 2008-11-19 10:23 by Wladimir Palant

A new Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5+ development build (2008111908) has been uploaded. Multi-language build is available but not all translations are done yet (missing strings will be in English).

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

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
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”
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)
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”

Known issues

Comments cannot be moved between filter groups
Subscription dialog on first start doesn’t play nice with session restore
~~Styling broken in SeaMonkey~~
~~Third-party check fails for some addresses (forum topic)~~
~~If a filter is added while Preferences window is open and sorted, filter is added to the list twice (forum topic)~~
~~If a filter is removed while Preferences window is open and sorted, filter is not removed from the list~~
In Firefox 3.1 nightlies between 20081112 and 20081119 some scripts are invisible to Adblock Plus (bug 464754)

Source code revision: a71700d9a6cd

Tags: adblock plus development builds

Comment [9]

ariel · 2008-11-19 13:27 · #

One very very small nitpicking.

The 16×16 ABP icon in the statusbar and toolbar is not looking very good in the last dev builds. The surrounding gray and white lines in the 24×24 icon aren’t being properly processed when resized to 16×16. It looks squashed.

except (and including) that, great work. :)
some one · 2008-11-19 21:54 · #

Same opinion here. The small icon looks strange.
Screenshot:
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9008/bild1yr1.jpg
laszlo · 2008-11-20 02:38 · #

If this were a poll I’d vote against the new 16×16 icon, too. Far too cramped.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

No, there is no poll. But, as usually, alternative suggestions are welcome – so please send me your 16×16 icon as a PNG image.
asdf · 2008-11-20 06:22 · #

Somehow this development build is making the process of scrolling via the arrow keys very slow. Additionally, when using Reddit and using the toolbar, the toolbar frame expands to the size of the whole window. And even though I have frames with forced resizability, I can’t use my mouse to drag the borders any faster than I can do so with my keyboard. Which is now painfully slow. Like 3 lines a second.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4 ID:2008102920

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Works fine here. Maybe one of your other extensions interfering?
Ares2 · 2008-11-20 16:31 · #

Hmm, now that this issue is also fixed, is element hiding ‘ready for prime time’ (i.e. suggesting EasyList+EasyElement in the subscription tab instead of EasyList; use Dr.Evil’s full list instead of the site specific one)? Or do we still have to wait until there is some kind of whitelisting for single hiding rules?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

You are right, I think we can try it now: http://hg.mozdev.org/adblockplus/rev/477c5f6c1dcf
Ares2 · 2008-11-20 17:09 · #

Nice!!! I’m happy now :D .

Reminder: The subscription page has to be updated before the release. :P .
laszlo · 2008-11-20 18:03 · #

What was wrong with the old ones?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I cleaned them up somewhat and tried to increase contrast. But I guess I can remove the white border again.
ultravioletu · 2008-11-20 19:36 · #

I like the new white border, though….
laszlo · 2008-11-20 19:40 · #

Thanks, Wladimir. Less is more, in this case anyway.

Commenting is closed for this article.