Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus 1.3.1 for Opera released · 2012-11-13 12:41 by Wladimir Palant

Note: In order to install from our website you have to add https://adblockplus.org to the list of trusted websites in Opera. This will no longer be necessary once the update is approved on the Opera Add-ons site.

Opera 12.10 release a few days ago introduced significant improvements to their URL Filter API. This finally allows an ad blocking extension in Opera to achieve results that are comparable to Adblock Plus for Firefox and Chrome. So we decided to take up the challenge and to release Adblock Plus for Opera.

The current release replaces the older Opera AdBlock extension (a project that will not be developed further) but it is actually based on Adblock Plus 1.3.1 for Chrome. We plan to release Adblock Plus for Opera and Chrome from a common code base in future, the releases will be published simultaneously. There are currently no development builds for Opera but those should become available soon.

There are important caveats to note:

Disabling Adblock Plus on particular websites isn’t possible. This is an Opera limitation, our filters can either apply to all websites or to none of them.
“Hide placeholders of blocked elements” feature known from Firefox and Chrome isn’t available, this is also an Opera limitation.
There is currently no user interface to aid filter creation. We hope to provide something here soon.
Handling of abp: links on web pages isn’t implemented. This should be fixed in the next release.

Tags: adblock plus opera releases

Comment [7]

Markus · 2012-11-13 16:37 · #

Not to play the devil’s advocate here, but with the limitations mentioned, in what way exactly is this superior to content filtering via urlfilter.ini and/or the internal “site preferences” options that are already built-in to Opera? Out of the box, Opera cannot hide placeholder elements either, but it has a UI that allows for element examination and filter creation, and is able to enable or disable filtering or other display options on a per-site basis. So the only advantage of ABP would be for people who use filter subscriptions, or am I missing something?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Adblock Plus is using the same mechanism so it’s not surprising that the limitations are similar. And – yes, currently the advantages are mostly for people who don’t want to tweak everything themselves.
Gingerbread Man · 2012-11-13 17:48 · #

Opera stinks when it comes to choosing what to block. The point-and-click approach is serviceable enough to block annoying ads, but if you want to get rid of tracking beacons and other invisible junk, you’re out of luck.
It would be great if Adblock Plus for Opera had a blockable items list like in Firefox. I don’t know what it’s like in Chrome, so if the two extensions will share the codebase, I don’t know if that will be an upcoming feature or if it’s out of the question.

For now, I’m very happy to have access to the filter subscriptions with comparable syntax support. Thank you for making Adblock Plus available for Opera.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Porting blockable items list to Chrome is something that we would like to do. At the moment, doing the same for Opera will be a lot more complicated. Also, it simply won’t show everything – we cannot really learn what has been blocked with our rules so there will be many hacks involved. So implementing this definitely won’t be the top priority for us.
Dejwid · 2012-11-14 11:41 · #

Another adblock for Opera https://addons.opera.com/pl/extensions/details/adblockforopera/?display=en CAN disable blocking for particular websites. So whats the problem?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Looks like they found an interesting hack to partially compensate Opera’s limitations here. Yes, we might do something like that as well.
Interesting Extension for Opera. · 2012-11-15 16:33 · #

I would install this over my built-in ulrfilter.ini customised(i will remove this) if those 4 caveats you listed are gone.

i will wait for future updates and i’ll keep track of this extension.

for now i wont install this.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

One is mostly gone already in version 1.3.2.
Interesting Extension for Opera. · 2012-11-15 16:41 · #

Some of the comments says(with updated 1.3.2) it doesnt work

i WILL REALLY use this if the rest 3 bugs are gone.
Dave · 2012-11-17 06:24 · #

Hi. I’ve used Opera Adblock for the longest time now. It was excellent. It also had a feature where you could single-left-click the badge icon and it would disable blocking globally until clicked again, and would appear differently (I liked to make it grey when disabled). I don’t understand. If you’re going to acquire and totally replace an extension, I don’t think you should important features from it… Do you plan to add that back?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

You can right-click the icon and choose “Disable”, this actually works better than any extension feature. Enabling it again is a bit more complicated unfortunately, you have to press Ctrl+Shift+E and enable Adblock Plus there. As to whether we plan to add an internal “disable everywhere” feature – yes, most likely. We want to have all features currently available in Firefox ported over whenever possible.
Stewart · 2012-12-02 17:05 · #

AdBlock makes Chrome even better. I don’t know why anyone would even bother using internet IE. Unless of course they like to have their browser window covered in adds

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