Adblock Plus and (a little) more

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).

Tags: adblock plus releases

Comment [9]

Tristan.B · 2014-04-22 12:50 · #

Hi ! Congrats, the new version works flawlessly here. Startup takes less than a second now.

The only problem I have is a “blinking” of the UI when Firefox starts : It seems like a line of icons appears and disappears at the top of the browser. Nothing really serious but it’s a bit annoying, and is clearly related to adblock+ as everything works fine when it’s disabled.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I filed https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/384 on that issue.
Brasi · 2014-04-25 11:26 · #

I have the same “blinking” issue as Tristan.B. Wladimir can you look into it?
toriton · 2014-04-27 00:36 · #

this si NOT due to adblock 2.6.
since one month or more.
Asd · 2014-04-27 10:51 · #

Version 2.5.1 of the Firefox add-on still not updated to 2.6.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

That’s because Mozilla is still reviewing it – reviews currently take more than a week. Until then the new version only shows up on https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/adblock-plus/versions/. You can install the current version from our website nevertheless.
locutusx · 2014-05-09 00:35 · #

A lot of people on the forums seem upset about a feature change which causes ABP to experience a delayed startup:

https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22906&start=0

Are there any plans to make any changes in future versions, which may mitigate this issue?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Yes, we do plan to speed up Adblock Plus startup. However, we don’t plan to block Firefox startup again.
Brian · 2014-05-11 20:35 · #

Adblock plus current version causes Firefox to hang during shutdown. After removing Adblock Firefox can open & close with no problems.
Firefox 29
i7/16GB Mem/256GBmsata/gtx660M/win864bit

Tried a fresh reinstall to no avail.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Are you clearing history on shutdown or something like that? Generally, it is better if you ask in the forum – the forum allows asking follow-up questions, the blog doesn’t.
Supertramp · 2014-05-13 07:43 · #

Hi! First, I’m grateful for ABP, otherwise I wouldn’t bother posting ;)

But the delayed startup issue may impact more than you guys expected. There are multiple cases where TONS of tabs can be loaded right on Firefox startup. If ABP isn’t ready, that makes it an issue big enough for me to downgrade or consider other adblockers :/

Here’s some cases:

- All pinned tabs load at Firefox startup no matter what

- All tabs load for users with a checkbox unticked in Options > Tabs

- One tab will load per opened window as saved in the Firefox session file

Making ABP load faster so it can catch up earlier is good, but will it ever be fast enough to block the requests to creepy ad websites from all those tabs that load on Firefox startup ?

And assuming reaching such an insane speed is possible, how many months of development will that be ?

I understand you decided on a direction and don’t want to go back, but if you could provide an option – even an about:config only option – that will enforce ABP rules strictly and prevent loading of resources before ABP is ready, that would be most sensible from a user perspective.

Remember the first promise of your add-on is to block ads and eventually trackers that the user disapproved by downloading various lists.

Thanks for reading, sorry it’s a little long
Supertramp · 2014-05-13 15:34 · #

^ Blocking trackers, in particular, means a necessity to send no request at all to them ^
Trevor · 2014-05-13 16:41 · #

“Yes, we do plan to speed up Adblock Plus startup. However, we don’t plan to block Firefox startup again.”
Can you please elaborate?

The problem right now is that ads load before ABP does anything about this.

“we don’t plan to block Firefox startup again.”
Does this mean you can prevent ads from loading (not just prevent it from showing up on screen) without slowing down FF?

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