Why can't Adblock Plus be as efficient as uBlock?

Various discussions related to Adblock Plus development
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mario68
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:07 pm

Why can't Adblock Plus be as efficient as uBlock?

Post by mario68 »

Hi,

Some random guys on github created a whole new ad blocker from scratch that uses the same filter syntax rules than AdBlock Plus (thus it's fully compatible with all existing filter lists).
But their project is an order of magnitude more efficient than AdBlock Plus!

I tried it and I didn't notice any drawbacks. The only thing I noticed was that memory usage went down dramatically and performance improved.

So there came a couple of questions to my mind:
What does AdBlock Plus do differently to be so inefficient?
Can AdBlock Plus adopt some of their techniques to improve efficiency as well?
Or is there a fundamental disadvantage of uBlock that I haven't noticed so far?
Last edited by mario68 on Thu Jun 04, 2015 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
lewisje
Posts: 2743
Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:07 pm

Re: Why can't Adblock be as efficient as uBlock?

Post by lewisje »

Raymond Hill actually created the ancestor of uBlock (HTTP Switchboard) about a year ago, but it didn't become widely known until October; anyway, my understanding is that the ABP team actually is trying to make the extension more memory-efficient, using some of the insights in uBlock, but it's harder than you might think to rearchitect an existing codebase.

(Also, FYI, the name of this extension is "Adblock Plus" and there is another competing extension called "AdBlock" that is even less memory-efficient; please keep them straight.)
There's a buzzin' in my brain I really can't explain; I think about it before they make me go to bed.
mario68
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jun 03, 2015 6:07 pm

Re: Why can't Adblock Plus be as efficient as uBlock?

Post by mario68 »

Yes, I meant Adblock Plus. I've corrected it.

Edit: My main post has been locked, and the link to the project I'm talking about has been deleted.
So uBlock is seen as a thread by the AdBlock Plus developers because they can't compete with this much more efficient addon thus deleting all references to it? Lol.
You can find the project if you search for chrisaljoudi and uBlock on GitHub. However, this is actually a fork of the original project. The original project is called uBlock Origin and is developed by gorhill.
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Gingerbread Man
Posts: 1339
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:28 am

Re: Why can't Adblock Plus be as efficient as uBlock?

Post by Gingerbread Man »

Hello,

If you're referring to memory usage, there's the blog post from last year:
blog/on-the-adblock-plus-memory-consumption

If you want more technical details, search the issue tracker (one or two issue reports are linked in the above blog post).
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