Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus 2.6.4 for Firefox released · 2014-07-22 17:59 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus 2.6.4 for Firefox

Changes

Made sure that data is always written to disk immediately whenever filter hit counts are reset (issue 430).
Fixed: Moving filters with Ctrl-Up/Down doesn’t work in Firefox 30 and above (issue 716).
Fixed: Find functionality in the preferences doesn’t indicate that the search pattern wasn’t found (issue 455).
Fixed: User isn’t informed about anti-adblock warnings on websites producing them (issue 764).
Fixed: Blockable items aren’t refreshed on tab change in SeaMonkey (issue 290).
Fixed: “Disable on this page only” doesn’t work correctly if the address ends with # (issue 580).

Adblock Plus 2.6.3 for Firefox released · 2014-06-03 18:05 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus 2.6.3 for Firefox

This is a bugfix release with the focus on stability.

Changes

Worked around a Firefox bug preventing filters from being saved in Firefox 22 and older on Windows (issue 530).
Default context menu is no longer overridden on the toolbar icon if a left click would result in the same action already (issue 449).
Fixed: Adblock Plus toolbar icon appears delayed (issue 293).
Fixed: Warning shows up in console concerning use of setUserData (only resolved for Firefox 32 and higher, issue 47).
Fixed: Bogus tooltip on the “Slow” column in Filter Preferences (issue 594).

Adblock Plus 1.8.3 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-06-03 17:45 by Thomas Greiner

Install Adblock Plus 1.8.3 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.3 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.3 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Issues like filters being removed on Chrome and settings being reset on Safari led to Adblock Plus not blocking any ads for some users. Starting with this release, the default filter lists will automatically be restored when no filter lists are configured (issue 417). Users who are affected by this will be shown a message and should check their filter list settings.

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Worked around two bugs in Chrome when using Shadow DOM (issue 450 and issue 498).
Fixed an issue with blocking ads in situations where we don’t know the top level frame (issue 451).
Enabled element hiding and collapsing inside inline frames on Chrome 37. A solution for older versions of Chrome and Opera still needs to be implemented (issue 581).

Safari-only changes

Fixed blocking of elements embedded with a relative URL (issue 573).

Adblock Plus 1.8.2 for Safari released · 2014-05-14 13:00 by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 1.8.2 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Just before we released Adblock Plus for Safari last week, we realized a WebKit bug which made Adblock Plus block the content of every web page. However, the workaround we originally implemented only mitigated the issue. While websites weren’t rendered empty anymore, occasionally element hiding still didn’t work. The good news are that we finally identified the WebKit bug responsible, and implemented another workaround that hopefully fixes element hiding once and for all (issue 419).

We also fixed an issue with blocking YouTube video ads. This is the second time since last week that YouTube updated their website, and broke blocking of in-video ads with Adblock Plus for Safari (issue 471). But with this release all ads on YouTube are blocked again.

Tags: adblock plus safari releases

Adblock Plus 2.6.1 for Firefox released · 2014-05-13 14:57 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus 2.6.1 for Firefox

This is a bugfix release with the focus on stability.

Changes

Fixed: No first-run page appears in Firefox for Android and no filter subscription is selected by default (issue 99).
Fixed: Opening settings from the first-run page doesn’t work in Firefox for Android (issue 255).
Fixed:Adblock Warning Removal List gets disabled on update even if the user opted in earlier (issue 424).
Fixed: Home and End keys don’t work when editing a filter (issue 256).
Fixed: Wrong filter rule suggested when blocking an address that contains a hash part (issue 247).
Fixed: Adblock Plus icon reappears after restart if removed from the toolbar in SeaMonkey (issue 186).

Adblock Plus 1.8.1 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-05-07 15:10 by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 1.8.1 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.1 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8.1 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Unfortunately, YouTube updated their website around the same time we released Adblock Plus for Safari yesterday, and partially broke blocking of videos ads in Safari (issue 438). But the good news are that we were quickly able to fix it, blocking all ads on YouTube again.

This release also fixes a regression with the “Block Element” context menu entry, which was broken in Chrome and Opera (issue 437). And we fixed an issue with the Dutch and Estonian translation which prevented installation from Chrome Web Store depending on selected language.

Adblock Plus 1.8 for Chrome, Opera and Safari released · 2014-05-06 14:00 by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 1.8 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 1.8 for Opera (Opera 17 or higher required)
Install Adblock Plus 1.8 for Safari (Safari 6 or higher required)

Adblock Plus for Safari is out of beta and this is the first release where we release for Safari, Chrome and Opera simultaneously. Adblock Plus for Safari is mostly on par with Adblock Plus for Chrome and Opera. There are currently some limitations however when it comes to blocking popups, XMLHttpRequests and requests initiated by Flash. Most of these are limitations in Safari that will hopefully be addressed in future Safari versions.

We also added a notification that shows up the first time users visit websites which show obtrusive anti-adblock messages, asking them whether to block those or not. This was ported from Adblock Plus for Firefox, where we introduced it in February (issue 174).

In order to hide elements we have to inject a stylesheet into the web page. However, changing an arbitrary web page always introduces the chance to break something. So we are now using Shadow DOM if available (that’s almost all supported Chrome and Opera versions). This allows us to hide our stylesheet from the web page itself (issue 309).

Chrome 35 is now in beta and has changed quite a few things in particular for extensions. So this release includes changes to restore compatibility with Chrome 35. At the same time we have dropped support for versions older than Chrome 28. Adblock Plus already suffered from some limitations on older Chrome versions, but with recent changes it is no longer possible to support Chrome 18 to 27.

This update also contains a fix for an issue with saving the data to disk which occasionally led to all filter lists and custom filters being removed (issue 361).

Other changes

Fixed: Wrong filter was sometimes created by “Block Element” dialog when matching elements by class.
Fixed various issues with the emergency notification mechanism.
The icon indicating whether Adblock Plus is enabled/disabled is correctly set on startup now.
Collapsed elements are now hidden instead of being removed from the document, in order to prevent JavaScript issues (issue 194).
Added high-resolution icons for Retina displays (issue 4).
Fixed issues with unknown frames and memory leaks while keeping track of frames (issue 178).
Fixed race condition sometimes preventing initialization on first run (issue 337).

Element Hiding Helper 1.3 released · 2014-04-22 10:58 by Wladimir Palant

Install Element Hiding Helper 1.3

Changes

Fixed: Integration with the Inspector tool broken in current Firefox versions (issue 5).
Fixed: Filter Composer suggests empty domain name for host names with a trailing dot (forum topic).
Fixed: Element Hiding Helper menu item isn’t added in some windows (forum topic).
Fixed: Element Hiding Helper menu item doesn’t show up if Adblock Plus icon is placed in the Australis panel (issue 229).
Fixed: Shortcut key on OS X is Ctrl-Shift-K rather than Cmd-Shift-K.

Adblock Plus 2.6 for Firefox released · 2014-04-22 09:42 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus 2.6 for Firefox

The main focus of this release were performance improvements.

Changes

Made sure Adblock Plus initialization doesn’t delay Firefox startup (issue 117).
Switched to a faster way to access Adblock Plus data on disk (issue 153).
Fixed regression in Adblock Plus 2.5.1: Adblock Plus initialization takes longer for each new window opened (issue 238).
Fixed: Firefox Sync integration sometimes won’t work (issue 261).
Fixed: Filter search in Filter Preferences was broken in newer Firefox versions.
Fixed: Wrong button type displayed for Adblock Plus immediately after customizing toolbar in Firefox 29 and above (bug 981543).
Fixed: Homepage link is displayed in Filter Preference even if the subscription doesn’t define a homepage (issue 48).
Fixed: Pop-up blocker won’t work in some scenarios (issue 341).
Various code cleanup tasks (issue 137, issue 301, issue 354).

Adblock Plus 1.2.1 for Android released · 2014-04-03 11:22 by Wladimir Palant

Install Adblock Plus for Android

If you already have Adblock Plus for Android, it should notify you about the update shortly and download it automatically.

Important note: We strongly encourage you to install this release as soon as possible, it fixes a security issue present in all previous Adblock Plus for Android versions.

In addition to that, this fixes a bug in the previous version that caused development builds to be offered as updates for the release version. Because of that issue most Adblock Plus for Android users are using development builds now so this release will be offered as an update for development builds as well. This unfortunately also includes users who explicitly chose to install development builds — if that’s true for you please install Adblock Plus 1.2.1.319 for Android manually to get back to the development build channel.