Adblock Plus roadmap
This roadmap shows the high-level state of planning for Adblock Plus and related extensions. It is subject to constant change. A new version is generally being released when all features scheduled for it have been implemented and sufficiently tested in development builds.
Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus 1.3
- Allow installation/deinstallation without a restart (for Firefox 4) – mostly done, delayed by bug 564667
- Reevaluate extension dependencies now that Mozilla is dropping support for them – mostly done
- Give an easy way to report issues to subscription maintainers
- More light-weight way to attach data to DOM nodes – done
- Allow putting a default patterns.ini into extension directory (for global installations) – done
- List of blockable items: Improve handling of changes in the list – done
- Give up separation between images and background images (detection of background images is unreliable, especially now that Firefox 3.6 does prefetching of images) – done
- Improve subscription downloads to distribute downloads more equally – done
- Change handling of externally maintained filter subscriptions, these should no longer persist (an extension maintaining such a filter list will need to be present when Adblock Plus starts up and add its subscription again, prevents such subscriptions being stuck without any extension to update them)
- List of blockable items: Make tooltips display info on disabled filters as well
- Simplify using Adblock Plus in “blacklist mode” (add “@@$document” via option and allow “Disable on …” to modify it) – tentative
- Add UI to create exception rules with the new $elemhide option – tentative
- Make sure rules added by other extensions like Element Hiding Helper are always enabled – done
- Blockable items: when multiple items are selected open all of them in tabs – done
- Drop code importing filters from Adblock and Adblock Plus 0.5, neither of them has noteworthy user numbers by now – done
- Blockable items: Add ‘first party’/‘third party’ text to document source column to allow filtering by it – tentative
- Built-in support for Firefox Sync – tentative
Unscheduled changes
- Support for Firefox Mobile 2.0 (with separate chrome and content processes)
- Restore K-Meleon support (for K-Meleon 1.6)
- Add tooltip for filters in Preferences dialog
- Don’t open a new window when user is blocking from the list of blockable items, show filter composer there directly
- Thunderbird: Improve support for browser tabs
- Preview for subscription being added
- Better support for data: URL subscriptions
- Add Wyzo support
- Easy way to back up and restore patterns.ini
- Support TLD wildcard for $domain option
- Thunderbird: Allow restricting rules to mails from particular address or domain
- Add filter source as column in blockable items
- C++ implementation of core classes (via JSctypes or XPCOM) for better performance (current JavaScript implementation stays there as fallback)
Element Hiding Helper
Element Hiding Helper 1.1
To be released simultaneously with Adblock Plus 1.3
- Update for changes in Adblock Plus 1.3 – mostly done
- Replace add-on manager’s dependencies by a better mechanism to ensure that a compatible Adblock Plus version is installed – mostly done
- Save locale metadata in meta.properties like Adblock Plus, in particular ensure localized descriptions even if the extension is disabled – done
- Use own About dialog instead of reusing the one from Adblock Plus – done
- Use own icon instead of reusing the one from Adblock Plus – done
- Warn when adding a filter to a disabled group like the filter composer in Adblock Plus
- Improve element position calculation, use newer code from Adblock Plus
- Don’t include tag name by default if class or id are selected
- Allow using Shift+mousewheel for wider/narrower commands
- Use different approach to mark selected elements, one that works without injecting HTML nodes into the document – tentative
- Add “lock selection” command – tentative
- Better handling of id and class attributes – tentative
- Invalid id and class attributes shouldn’t be treated in a special way – tentative
Adblock Plus Watcher
Adblock Plus Watcher 1.1.3
To be released simultaneously with Adblock Plus 1.3
- Update for changes in Adblock Plus 1.3
- Replace add-on manager’s dependencies by a better mechanism to ensure that a compatible Adblock Plus version is installed
- Use own About dialog instead of reusing the one from Adblock Plus
- Use own icon instead of reusing the one from Adblock Plus
- Save locale metadata in meta.properties like Adblock Plus, in particular ensure localized descriptions even if the extension is disabled – tentative