Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus 2.9 for Firefox released · 2017-05-25 13:34 by Wladimir Palant

This release lays important groundwork for the Web Extensions migration. The way Adblock Plus stores its data has changed drastically, though for users everything should stay exactly the same (issue 5048). The new location of your filters and subscriptions is the browser-extension-data/{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}/storage.js file in your Firefox profile, the same data will be used by the Adblock Plus build based on the Web Extensions platform once it is ready.

Additional changes

The hidden data_directory and please_kill_startup_performance preferences have been removed.
It is now possible to use { and } in CSS property filters (issue 4684).

Tags: adblock plus releases

Comment [6]

ABP-user · 2017-05-27 00:06 · #

Thank you for your excellent product and for ABP 2.9. Please let users know it is not for Firefox less than 51. Also if possible, please help keep ABP 2.8 alive for those that can not update to above Firefox 50.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

AMO shows the required Firefox versions, and installing on older Firefox versions isn’t possible. It’s unfortunate that we had to set the required Firefox version so high but support for hybrid extensions (what we need for data migration) is relatively new. You will be able to keep using Adblock Plus 2.8.2 on older Firefox versions but publishing updates for this branch isn’t possible.
Guest · 2017-05-27 02:04 · #

A couple of questions about leftover files after the upgrade. I see the following.

tmp-zaw.xpi in AppData\Local\Temp
trash folder in the extensions folder under Firefox profile

I am guessing the first is the new version and the second contains the old version and both should have been automatically deleted after the upgrade was complete. Safe to remove?

Is the adblockplus folder in the Firefox profile with elemhide and patterns files obsolete now and are safe to delete or are they still used in addition to the browser-extension-data/{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}/storage.js file? When backing up, save which one?

Thanks.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I have no idea about that XPI file – it’s not Adblock Plus creating temporary files there.

As to the adblockplus folder – elemhide.css is obsolete and has been for some releases already. The patterns files there are still being used (particularly the backups) as fallback, when no such data exists in the new storage. Once you have all five automatic backups in the storage.js file (typically after roughly a week of using Adblock Plus 2.9) there will be no need for fallback any more.
cash · 2017-05-27 10:32 · #

Does ABP have any plan to improve pop-up and pop-under blocking as as what you are doing for example with webrtc and websocket?

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I don’t know, I’m not really involved here. Is this some particular issue tracker entry that you are referring to?
Guest · 2017-05-27 23:27 · #

“I have no idea about that XPI file – it’s not Adblock Plus creating temporary files there.”

Perhaps Firefox created it? It is definitely the new ABP version as it corresponds to the same size, time and file {d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d} in the extensions folder. Maybe because the open blockable items window was open at the time of the automatic upgrade?

It would be safe to delete that temporary file and the trash folder in the extensions folder under Firefox profile after the upgrade is complete correct? The trash folder looks like the old version and the temp file appears to be a duplicate of the new version that is in the extensions folder.

Will that adblockplus folder get deleted automatically at some point once the new storage.js gets filled up with the backups or just manually delete it in a couple of weeks?

Thanks Wladimir.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

I don’t know why Firefox wouldn’t clean up after update but I guess that deleting old files is fine if the new version is working.

No, the adblockplus folder will not be deleted – outdated files in the Firefox profile are generally not being deleted, already because somebody might decide to downgrade at some point, but also simply because deleting these files is an unnecessary risk. It’s not like they are hurting anyone by sitting there (no, a few MB don’t matter given contemporary disk sizes).
SeaMonkey-user · 2017-05-31 17:23 · #

I got the 2.9 version in SeaMonkey 2.48b1 and it lost all filters and subscriptions. Luckily I could restore them from the last backup, but every time SeaMonkey was restarted the setting are gone again.
The things is the “browser-extension-data” path does not exist. I guess this Firefox change is not (yet) ported to SeaMonkey (although 2.48 is based on FF51).

I reverted to ABP 2.8.2.

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Yes, this is https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/5279, sorry about that. No data is lost and all will be fine once Adblock Plus 2.9.1 is released. We are currently in the process of testing the release candidate – rather tricky unfortunately given the scope of changes.
kevin · 2017-06-04 13:13 · #

Hi , there are load of issues in 2.9 and bad performance reported by users + data loss or no migration in some cases.

can you look into it?

https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/5285

https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/5284

https://nt.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6esz0r/is_anyone_experiencing_poor_performance_from/

Reply from Wladimir Palant:

Issue 5285 is resolved, the Firefox issue with similar symptoms (https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/5281) is unrelated and needs to be investigated. Issue 5284 (performace) is something we are looking into.

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