Asynchronous file operations, end of support for old browsers · 47 days ago by Wladimir Palant
Starting with Adblock Plus 2.0.4b.3443 reading and saving of patterns.ini and elemhide.css files will be asynchronous (meaning that they won’t delay other operations that Firefox or Adblock Plus might need to do). This approach has a bunch of advantages:
- Firefox startup and shutdown will be faster.
- Adblock Plus Preferences will be more responsive, changing something will no longer cause the browser to hang for a split second.
- The inherently unreliable cache.js file is no longer necessary and will not be used.
There are also some drawbacks which is why it took so long to make this decision:
- First browser window might appear before Adblock Plus managed to read its filters. If that happens, the web pages from the restored session (or the homepage) might have ads. This never happened in my testing but it is possible.
- patterns.ini is no longer saved on browser shutdown, some hit count information might get lost because of that (up to 250 hits).
Known issues (should be fixed soon):
- When updating from an earlier Adblock Plus version, the first-run page might open. Your settings will not be changed.
- Writing elemhide.css might fail in some rare scenarios.
In other news, support for anything before Firefox 8, Thunderbird 8 and SeaMonkey 2.5 has been dropped. I started cleaning up our code using the new platform capabilities and will continue doing so. Also, a work-around for the subscription download issue in Firefox 14 has been implemented.
Element Hiding Helper 1.2 release candidate available · 122 days ago by Wladimir Palant
Element Hiding Helper 1.2rc.382 is a release candidate for Element Hiding Helper 1.2. After the previous announcement it went through some major architectural simplifications, there shouldn’t be any visible changes however. Also, many translations have been updated already so that the Page Inspector button will be localized.
Using Page Inspector in Firefox 10 and higher to hide elements · 124 days ago by Wladimir Palant
Firefox 10 will introduce a new Page Inspector feature, you can read more about it here. This feature allows selecting elements a lot better than the current Element Hiding Helper. You can either right click an element and choose “Inspect Element” – the element will be selected in the Inspector and you will be able to click up/down in the hierarchy line at the bottom. Or you can choose “Inspect” from the Web Developer menu, this will let you select an element similarly to how you would do it with Element Hiding Helper. Once you click an element the selection is fixed, you can click the “Inspect” button to continue selecting. Starting with Firefox 11 there will also be a very impressive 3D View, something that was previously provided by the Tilt extension.
Element Hiding Helper 1.2b.372 will now add an “Hide with ABP” button to the inspector toolbar. This allows you to select an element with the Page Inspector and then click this button to open rule composer. If you use a pre-release Firefox version — please test this feature. Element Hiding Helper 1.2 should be released in a week, in time for Firefox 10 release.
In other news, all issues related to making Element Hiding Helper restartless should have been resolved by now. If you experience any issues, please comment in this post or create a forum topic.
Adblock Plus 1.2 for Chrome release candidate available · 134 days ago by Wladimir Palant
The current development build (Adblock Plus 1.1.4.757 for Google Chrome, the non-experimental version) is a release candidate for Adblock Plus 1.2. It got a bunch of changes over the last few days, mostly polishing:
- Options: Fixed displayed subscription download time after a filter update.
- Fixed content script functionality in Chrome 18.
- Fixed: Two “Add filter” dialogs might get opened at a time, in that case the first dialog becomes dysfunctional.
- Fixed third-party checks when not using webRequest API.
- Removed work-around for WebKit’s image loading bug (fixed in Chrome 16).
- Updated user interface translations from Adblock Plus/Firefox.
- Updated to current versions of code modules from Adblock Plus/Firefox.
- Updated to current jQuery and jQuery UI versions.
The bigger (and older) changes in this version:
- Better blocking thanks to webRequest API (only in Chrome 17 or with the experimental builds).
- Changed user interface for filter subscription management (an intermediate step towards porting our Firefox user interface).
- Improved “Add filter” dialog, safe from being manipulated by the web page and with filter editing.
- Filter data is being stored using File System API, file format identical to Firefox.
- Using the same algorithm for filter subscription updates as in Firefox (proper handling of expiration intervals, download mirrors etc).
- Proper handling of $third-party filter options, top-level domains like co.uk are now being considered.
- No longer putting all our element hiding rules into the document’s DOM.
There will be a release shortly, please report any issues you notice.
Element Hiding Helper: the restartless edition · 139 days ago by Wladimir Palant
Starting with Element Hiding Helper 1.2a.361 the Element Hiding Helper extension installs and uninstalls without a browser restart as well. You can also enable or disable Element Hiding Helper immediately in the Add-ons Manager. However, you will still need to restart your browser when updating from an older extension version because this older version cannot shut down while the browser is running. As with the Diagnostics extension, a reasonably new application version is required (at least Firefox 8, Thunderbird 8, SeaMonkey 2.5), old versions are no longer supported.
Another important change: Element Hiding Helper will no longer warn you if Adblock Plus isn’t installed, we will instead rely on AMO to communicate this to users. One reason for removing this check is that Adblock Plus should also become restartless in future which will make checking for its presence a lot more complicated.
Diagnostics for Adblock Plus: the restartless edition · 141 days ago by Wladimir Palant
Creating extensions that can be installed, uninstalled and updated without a browser restart used to be very painful but got a whole lot easier with Firefox 8. I am now making all my add-ons restartless, Diagnostics for Adblock Plus is the first try. The current development build (Diagnostics 1.2b.156) should work exactly like the previous versions but e.g. disable immediately if you click the corresponding button in the Add-ons Manager. Reasonably new browser versions are required (at least Firefox 8, Thunderbird 8, SeaMonkey 2.5), old versions are no longer supported.
First Customizations for Adblock Plus development builds · 152 days ago by Wladimir Palant
Customizations for Adblock Plus is a new extension providing some advanced semi-supported customization options. The goal is to make the customizations such as the ones described in the FAQ more comfortable and easier to try. The extension installs without requiring a browser restart, clicking the Options button in the Add-ons Manager shows the available options. Right now we have:
- Vertical layout for Filter Preferences (filters below subscriptions)
- Some more options for Filter Preferences to save space
- Toolbar icon display configuration (text and/or icon)
- Removing Adblock Plus from all browser menus
- Two hidden Adblock Plus options (left-click action for the toolbar icon and default selection for the Filter Composer)
Release candidate for Adblock Plus 2.0 available · 165 days ago by Wladimir Palant
All the necessary changes are done and the development builds starting with Adblock Plus 2.0rc.3323 are release candidates for Adblock Plus 2.0. If everything goes well it will be released on Monday.
Changes since the previous announcement:
- Adblock Plus options are now displayed directly on its page in Add-ons Manager (in Firefox 7 and above, in older versions the Options button opens toolbar icon’s menu).
- Changed the way the toolbar icon is being hidden, now it can always be brought back via toolbar customization.
- Status bar icon is no longer being displayed in Firefox version with add-on bar (there is no real status bar).
- List of blockable items can now be searched both by localized type name as well as by the corresponding filter option (forum topic).
- When recommended subscriptions are being added the language no longer becomes part of the subscription title.
- An “Adblock Plus” menu has been added to the classic Tools menu for reasons of keyboard accessibility, the Adblock Plus menu entry in the View menu has been removed.
- Added a warning if a subscription contains disabled filters (forum topic).
- Fixed: Don’t create new filter groups for filters being added if a user-defined group is already available (forum topic).
- Fixed: Using context menu prevents a memory compartment from being released (forum topic).
- Lots of polishing, especially on the new Filter Preferences dialog.
Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus · 169 days ago by Wladimir Palant
The development build last Friday introduced a new feature that took many people by surprise: Allowing acceptable ads. Sorry about that, I am usually trying to announce large functionality changes in a timely manner but that didn’t work this time. As of Adblock Plus 2.0b.3277 the current state is:
- “Allow non-intrusive advertising” option is enabled by default for all users but the ones using privacy filter lists (EasyPrivacy, Fanboy’s Tracking, Adverisity Privacy). The documentation explains why it has to be enabled by default.
- The first-run page notifies users about this change, opt-out works by clicking “Filter Preferences” and unchecking the option there.
- On the technical side, this option simply represents an additional filter subscription. The documentation describes how to view this filter subscription or disable the special treatment for it.
- There is a forum topic with lots of my replies to questions concerning this feature.
Other changes since the previous announcement:
- Filter search is now possible in the Filter Preferences.
- “Collapse blocked elements” option has been renamed into “Hide placeholders of blocked elements”.
- “Count filter hits” is now a visible option.
- Added “Reset hit statistics” filter action.
- Added warning for filter subscriptions requiring a newer Adblock Plus version.
- Updating all filter subscriptions is now possible using Ctrl-Shift-T keyboard shortcut (not visible in the user interface).
- Fixed: Filter groups should also have “Show/hide filters” in their Actions menu.
- Fixed: ABP menu still has the old “Preferences” menu item.
- Fixed: Dragging a filter subscription might display as a button or menu being dragged.
New Filter Preferences dialog and more · 173 days ago by Wladimir Palant
Huge changes that were living on the “experimental” branch just landed, we are now in the Beta phase for Adblock Plus 2.0. The most notable changes in Adblock Plus 2.0b.3255:
- New Filter Preferences dialog replaces the old Preferences dialog and hopefully makes managing filters and subscriptions easier.
- Custom filter groups can be created, you are no longer limited by the groups created automatically.
- Filter groups can contain multiple instances of the same filter (most importantly comments).
- Filter subscription is now added automatically on startup, the user no longer needs to confirm (but can easily revert the decision).
- The new Backup and Restore functionality allows exporting all filter data as well as custom filters only. The latter is identical to the old Import/Export but will restore filter groups.
While this functionality is finally usable we are not done yet. There are multiple known issues, most of them should be fixed over the course of the next few days:
- Resetting hit counts isn’t possible yet.
- Searching filters isn’t possible yet.
- There is no warning message if the filter subscription requires a newer Adblock Plus version.
- Filter actions and “Add filter” don’t appear disabled even when they are unavailable.
- Creating filters via filter composer will create a new special filter group even when user-defined groups are available.
- Filter editor ignores Home and End keys (not sure whether this can be fixed).
- Actions executed on many filters (delete or remove) might take too long.
Some things that won’t change:
- Enter key closes the Filter Preferences dialog, F2 has to be used to start editing a filter.
- Filter editor no longer has a Close button.
If you find something else, please comment here or report a bug.