Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus 2.9.1 for Firefox released · 2017-06-07 20:11 by Wladimir Palant

Unfortunately, the Adblock Plus 2.9 release didn’t go as smoothly as we hoped for. Most importantly, the performance degradation caused by the new data storage turned out more severe than we expected, some users were experiencing regular noticeable browser hangs. While the performance of reading and saving Adblock Plus filters hasn’t improved yet, we turned off filter hit counts by default in Adblock Plus 2.9.1 as a first consequence to make sure the data no longer needs to be saved that often (issue 5298). Users who need this functionality can turn it back on by clicking the ABP icon, going into “Options” and checking “Count filter hits.” We will be looking into other ways to improve this, even though the main issue can only be resolved by the Firefox developers.

It also wasn’t noticed before release that the new data storage doesn’t work in Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, so these users ended up with filters being reset on each restart. This has also been resolved in Adblock Plus 2.9.1 (issue 5279, issue 5285), the original data should show up again now. Some users are reporting similar issues in Firefox, a problem we couldn’t reproduce so far. If you are experiencing data loss on Firefox and are willing to let me debug the issue on your computer (via TeamViewer or a similar desktop sharing tool), please let me know in the comments below.

Tags: adblock plus releases

Comment [25]

abpuser · 2017-06-08 12:34 · #

Hello,

Install Adblock Plus 2.9.1 for Firefox
https://adblockplus.org/firefox
https://update.adblockplus.org/latest/adblockplusfirefox.xpi
“Agree and Install for Firefox” is the old version adblock_plus-2.8.2-an+fx+sm+tb.xpi .

Where is Adblock Plus 2.9.1 for Firefox(https://adblockplus.org/releases/adblock-plus-291-for-firefox-released) ?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Strange, I’ll have a look. On https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/adblock-plus/ you definitely get the current version.
abpuser · 2017-06-08 12:35 · #

Or is this the Development version?
abp-user2 · 2017-06-09 05:13 · #

Hello, I read about the new ABP 2.9.1 and read the “hit counts” turned off being mentioned so I looked at the options menu and did not see “Sync Adblock Plus settings”. When I looked a 2nd time I noticed “Sync Adblock Plus settings”. The 1st time it was not there. Then it was. Closing, running Ccleaner then reopening made it go away for about 30 minutes. I do not want the Firefox or adblock plus sync. Is there a firefox “about config” or other method to make the “sync” option go away in ABP’s options menu? (and why does it come and go??) Thank you.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

This option only shows up if Firefox Sync is set up. This also explains the delay – it won’t be visible as long as Firefox Sync didn’t start up.
Gary · 2017-06-09 10:00 · #

I have this issue to, the sync adblock keeps appearing and disappearing, also Firefox 53.0.3 on Sierra 10.12.5 has taken a hit to performance more so with 2.9.1 than 2.9 it seems.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

While Mozilla is working on resolving the performance issues, we are considering our options as well – improving here will take some time unfortunately. But I can definitely exclude a worse performance in 2.9.1 than in 2.9, there were not changes that could have caused it.
Gary · 2017-06-09 10:25 · #

I don’t have Firefox sync set up and never have and my issue is the same as abp-user2’s the adblock plus sync keeps appearing and vanishing (its not there at boot of the browser for sure)
Gary · 2017-06-09 10:33 · #

When i updated to 2.9.1 the browser became really unresponsive until I rebooted the Mac (new install of Firefox on a clean install of 10.12.5) My iMac is a late 2015 5K with a 1TB SSD and core i7 and 16GB ram and the browser is not as fluid as it was with 2.9 it took a while for the browser yop open as fats as it did as well so something changed that effected performance. I look forward to Mozilla’s fixes but maybe you could explain what’s going on here a bit, and why the sync menu appears and vanishes?
abp-user2 · 2017-06-09 21:05 · #

Hello Wladimir, As with user GARY, I have never used or started Firefox Sync. It seems it is there (running??) on its own and I don’t want it in Firefox. I also don’t care about a “Sync Adblock Plus settings” option and don’t know why it shows up and then does not (not just the check box but the entire option). This is just a confirmation and FYI to you. Thank you for your product.
abb · 2017-06-10 11:49 · #

firefox 52.1.2esr
user_pref(“javascript.enabled”, false);
A filter is not preserved.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

So far this has been reproduced for users who have lots of filter lists, particularly in 32-bit Firefox. How many filter lists do you have?
Gary · 2017-06-10 18:10 · #

Not sure if you are replying to the people with the sync Adblock issue appearing and vanishing, but just in case I have two filters, Easylist and Easyprivacy on 64bit Firefox.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I don’t think that this issue is important enough to be addressed. 1) It has been there for ages, so I’m not sure why people are noticing now. 2) It doesn’t really hurt anyone. 3) This option will be gone after the Web Extensions migration anyway – so in five months at the latest this issue will “resolve” itself.
abb · 2017-06-10 18:12 · #

A new profile was made.
A Adblock Plus 2.9.1 was installed.
Add one filter appropriately(example:“bbb”)
user_pref(“javascript.enabled”, false);
Restart
A filter can’t be kept.

Windows7 32bit
firefox 52.1.2esr 32bit

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Saving filters data takes time, especially now that we have to use Web Extensions APIs. Did you wait a bit before restarting?
abb · 2017-06-11 00:07 · #

I have a problem only when I stop javascript in about:config

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Thank you, I could reproduce this issue now. Yes, disabling JavaScript currently breaks Web Extensions – meaning also the Adblock Plus part now responsible for reading and saving data. This is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1329731 and has been resolved in Firefox 54. Firefox 54 is going to be released tomorrow.
Gary · 2017-06-11 03:09 · #

I” don’t think that this issue is important enough to be addressed. 1) It has been there for ages, so I’m not sure why people are noticing now. 2) It doesn’t really hurt anyone. 3) This option will be gone after the Web Extensions migration anyway – so in five months at the latest this issue will “resolve” itself.”

1) Yes it should be resolved because a process is running that has never been on adblock plus for me before ever, and since I don’t use sync on either Firefox or adblock plus then it is a process eating resources and the app is ram hungry enough as it is. 2) 5 months is a long time and you should be able to resolve this pretty easily. 3) it didn’t happen in 2.9 or 2.8.2 or any other version for myself and I imagine many others so there is a regression issue somewhere. The leave it as it doesn’t matter attitude, with respect is pretty disappointing. It may just make users look elsewhere too. The whole thing comes over a you just don’t care.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

It’s not running – it shows up in options, allowing you to enable it. It doesn’t require any resources as long as you don’t enable it, and especially if you never configured Firefox Sync in the first place.
abp-user2 · 2017-06-11 20:31 · #

Hello, Gary thank you for your input but I don’t think ABP is not caring. While it will be “corrected” in 5 months some of us use the ESR version and that will be until 2018. I too had not ~~noticed~~ the “Sync Adblock Plus settings” option until 2.9.1. But thank you for looking into our problems/questions. ABP is great.
abp-user#3 · 2017-06-11 21:23 · #

With windows XP, firefox 52.1.2, and ABP 2.9.0 the ABP sync option does appear and disappear. This firefox has never had sync used.
abb · 2017-06-14 14:32 · #

Setting “javascript.enabled” to “false” causes filter problem

Windows7 32bit
firefox 52.2.0esr

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Yes, I replied to that on #11 already.
abb · 2017-06-14 16:21 · #

firefox54.0 is no problem,
but there is a problem with firefox52.2.0esr.

It was no problem in Adblock Plus2.8.2.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Unfortunately, there is little we can do about Firefox 52 with JavaScript disabled (unsupported setting by the way) if we want to migrate Adblock Plus to WebExtensions at some point – and we have to, because legacy extensions will stop working soon. It’s a Firefox bug and the fix wasn’t backported to the ESR branch it seems.
Killhippie · 2017-06-15 11:26 · #

Just wanted to add since the new version of Firefox landed (54) the sync adblock menu appearing has no longer appeared for me.
DB · 2017-06-17 09:10 · #

I am running a fresh installation of Windows 10, using Firefox 54.0. AdBlockPlus 2.9.1 has absolutely ruined my browsing experience. Netflix, Youtube, Facebook and most other websites are extremely laggy, unresponsive and often simply do not load.

Which version of Ad BlockPlus is actually stable on Firefox 54.0?
killhippie · 2017-06-17 09:23 · #

In reply to DB I’m not experiencing that with firefox 54 using ABP 2.9.1 on macOS, sites open very fast.
abp-user2 · 2017-06-18 20:07 · #

Hello, Is it recommended to stay with ABP 2.9.1 (and above when available) with Firefox 52ESR or should we go back to 2.8.2? I do not see a significant problem with 2.9.1 but was just asking your advice Wladimir. Thank you.
abp-user2 · 2017-06-23 18:28 · #

Hello, Is it recommended to stay with ABP 2.9.1 (and above when available) with Firefox 52ESR or should we go back to 2.8.2? I do not see a significant problem with 2.9.1 but was just asking your advice Wladimir. Thank you.
abp-user2 · 2017-06-30 06:43 · #

Hello, 2 times now we had ABP not load completely saying we did not have any subscriptions. Closing and re-opening Firefox 52 ESR corrected it. We have 5 subscriptions. This has happened VERY seldom, only 2 times so far with ABP 2.9.1.
killhippie · 2017-07-01 12:10 · #

I’m having this issue now where launching firefox leaves me with no subscriptions and the loss of custom filters, this seems to be since firefox 54 was released. New profile and new install of ABP 2.91 and this still occurs.
Paul · 2017-07-07 04:12 · #

This version won’t install to the current version (47.0.2) of firefox.
killhippie · 2017-07-09 01:08 · #

at user Paul. Version 47.0.2 is not the current version of Firefox its 54.0.1 and the Extended release version is 52.1.0.

Commenting is closed for this article.