[FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Everything about using Adblock Plus on Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey
Guest

Re: ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by Guest »

Guest wrote:This problem occurs if dom.indexedDB.enabled is set to false in Firefox 35. The session store doesn't work anymore either. Don't delete your profile or reset Firefox, just set dom.indexedDB.enabled = true. Unfortunately this also allows any website to store databases on your computer (and track you with that). The only solution now seems to remove write access to the <profile>/storage folder.
Oh, wow. Thank you so much. I have been tediously trying to copy and paste everything I could think of to reset FF for the past hour(s). I have that setting set to enabled. I am so glad you posted before I lost everything and tried to put it back together again (which would have just caused the same issue again as long as I had remembered to change that setting.

Not to mention that you saved me from going through it again on another computer thinking it was an individual corrupted profile rather than caused by that setting.

So, any chance I can now just use Windows system restore to go back to before updating to FF 35 and just not update to 35? Or does system restore leave my FF 35 update even though it occurred after the last restore point?

Thank you both for your help.
Guest

Re: ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by Guest »

Guest wrote:So, any chance I can now just use Windows system restore to go back to before updating to FF 35 and just not update to 35? Or does system restore leave my FF 35 update even though it occurred after the last restore point?
Why would you want to use Windows system restore? Type about:config in the address bar of Firefox, search for dom.indexedDB.enabled and make sure it is set to true. Then restart Firefox and Adblock Plus should be working again.

In case this doesn't work: Is the session restore feature working in your Firefox? Go to Settings > General > From the When Firefox starts drop-down, select "Show my windows and tabs from last time". Press OK, open any website like cnn.com, close Firefox, start Firefox again. Is the tab with cnn.com being restored or does Firefox start with your home page?
Guest

Re: ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by Guest »

Guest wrote:
Guest wrote:So, any chance I can now just use Windows system restore to go back to before updating to FF 35 and just not update to 35? Or does system restore leave my FF 35 update even though it occurred after the last restore point?
Why would you want to use Windows system restore? Type about:config in the address bar of Firefox, search for dom.indexedDB.enabled and make sure it is set to true. Then restart Firefox and Adblock Plus should be working again.
Just so that I can have dom.indexedDB.enabled set to false rather than have it set to true with FF 35.

Do you happen to know if FF intends on fixing this issue or it is something deliberate?
In case this doesn't work: Is the session restore feature working in your Firefox? Go to Settings > General > From the When Firefox starts drop-down, select "Show my windows and tabs from last time". Press OK, open any website like cnn.com, close Firefox, start Firefox again. Is the tab with cnn.com being restored or does Firefox start with your home page?
It will be another day before I can test either the dom.indexedDB.enabled set to true setting or the session restore feature at this point. I don't care about session restore personally so my individual concern would be to get ABP working again and preferably with dom.indexedDB.enabled set to false. Either going back to FF 34 or Firefox fixing the dom.indexedDB.enabled issue in a new release (hopefully, quickly).

Do you know if my using Windows System Restore would restore to the time frame before I upgraded to FF 35 or is Firefox settings retained during a restore to an earlier point like the way Windows treats certain other files?

Thanks again.
ranasrule
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jan 13, 2015 5:33 am

Re: [FF settings / bug] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by ranasrule »

The only way I got it working was by creating a new profile
WonderWanderNeed help

Re: ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by WonderWanderNeed help »

Hello, I just joined this thread. I am having the same problem -- Adblock Plus won't work on Firefox 35.
Using Firefox 35 on Windows 7.

I tried "disabling" it,
and then hoped to "re-enable" it, but it wouldn't let me.
I tried re-downloading and re-installing Adblock Plus -- i sucessfully downloaded and the install began but then it said it wouldn't let me do it.

So I came here to ask for help.
Guest wrote:This problem occurs if dom.indexedDB.enabled is set to false in Firefox 35. The session store doesn't work anymore either. Don't delete your profile or reset Firefox, just set dom.indexedDB.enabled = true. Unfortunately this also allows any website to store databases on your computer (and track you with that). The only solution now seems to remove write access to the <profile>/storage folder.
I don't want to allow storage and tracking in that way.
Is there any other solution?
Guest wrote: Is the session restore feature working in your Firefox? Go to Settings > General > From the When Firefox starts drop-down, select "Show my windows and tabs from last time". Press OK, open any website like cnn.com, close Firefox, start Firefox again. Is the tab with cnn.com being restored or does Firefox start with your home page?
My session restore is broken with Firefox 35, it seems.

I'm in Windows 7.

When you say "Go to Settings > General > From the When Firefox starts drop-down" -- where is that menu? Where do I find the settings menu?
User avatar
mapx
Posts: 21940
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 2:01 pm

Re: ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by mapx »

WonderWanderNeed help wrote: When you say "Go to Settings > General > From the When Firefox starts drop-down" -- where is that menu? Where do I find the settings menu?
in menu, tools, options, "general" tab
WonderWander
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2015 2:14 pm

Re: ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by WonderWander »

WonderWanderNeed help wrote:When you say "Go to Settings > General > From the When Firefox starts drop-down" -- where is that menu? Where do I find the settings menu?
mapx wrote:in menu, tools, options, "general" tab
Thanks, found it.
WonderWander
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2015 2:14 pm

Re: [FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by WonderWander »

Okay so I followed the directions and went to Options > General > When Firefox starts
and I set it to "show my windows and tabs from last time".

I opened a few tabs, including CNN and other random but safe sites.

Then I exited Firefox.
But when I restarted Firefox, it went to my home page.
When I went to History in the menu, the "restore previous session" is greyed out (not clickable).

How does this applies to Adblock Plus? This seems to be another firefox 35 bug which I should report to mozilla.

So now I have two problems in Firefox 35:
1) Adblock Plus won't work and won't re-install.
2) It won't restore my previous Firefox session.

Back to the original question: How to get AdBlock Plus to work without allowing tracking?
User avatar
mapx
Posts: 21940
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 2:01 pm

Re: [FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by mapx »

You could change that setting (set dom.indexedDB.enabled to true), ABP will work, use the privacy feature (easyprivacy list) to avoid tracking
WonderWander
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2015 2:14 pm

Re: [FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by WonderWander »

mapx wrote:You could change that setting (set dom.indexedDB.enabled to true), ABP will work, use the privacy feature (easyprivacy list) to avoid tracking
What is "privacy feature (easyprivacy list)"?
User avatar
mapx
Posts: 21940
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2011 2:01 pm

Re: [FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by mapx »

EasyPrivacy privacy protection (supplement for EasyList)
you can subscribe it from: en/subscriptions/
PingHansen
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2015 3:59 pm

Re: [FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by PingHansen »

I can confirm that ABP 2.6.6 no longer works (at least not on Windows 7) when you downgrade from Firefox version 34.0.5 to Firefox version 35.

No, the Firefox installation is NOT broken, as an upgrade to version 34.0.5 fixes the issue. Other addons are broken as well, including Tab Mix Plus 0.4.1.7, which also resumes working with the upgrade. All indication points towards Mozilla having stepped in it.

In spite of several rather arrogant answers (mapx), I have no intention of messing with any Firefox settings, without fully understanding the consequences, but will stay with Firefox 34.0.5 until ABP has a workaround for version 35
User avatar
Gingerbread Man
Posts: 1339
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:28 am

Re: [FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by Gingerbread Man »

This is Mozilla bug 1079355. It should be resolved in Firefox 36, which will be released around February 24th. I performed a quick test and everything was fine in the latest Nightly (Firefox 38.0a1 2015-01-14) with the latest development build of Adblock Plus (2.6.6.3890).

There are only two safe solutions to this problem.

Undo the changes you've made to your Firefox preferences
  1. Type about:config into the address bar and press Enter.
  2. To bypass the warning, press the big button labeled “I'll be careful, I promise!”.
  3. In the search box, paste dom.indexedDB.enabled
  4. In the search results, right-click dom.indexedDB.enabled and choose “Reset”.
Switch to the test version of Firefox 36
  1. Understand that you'll be installing a beta version of Firefox. It may have some unresolved issues.
    https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/beta/all/
  2. Once you've installed that version of Firefox, install the development build of Adblock Plus.
    en/development-builds#installation
  3. Around February 24th, disable automatic updates for Firefox in the options/preferences.
  4. Watch the following page for updates and run the Firefox 36 installer when it's posted there. This will put you in the release update channel. You can re-enable automatic updates after that.
    https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/
  5. Install the release version of Adblock Plus.
    https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
Downgrading to Firefox 34 is not safe
This version exposes your system to security vulnerabilities that were patched in Firefox 35.
https://www.mozilla.org/security/known- ... s/firefox/

Downgrading to Firefox 31 ESR may break things
This is a special version of Firefox intended for organizations, currently based off Firefox 31. It contains most security patches, so it's not as much of a security risk as Firefox 34. However, downgrading from a newer version is best avoided, since it can still cause problems with your add-ons, preferences and the files that store your personal data.
https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/organizations/all/
Guest

Re: [FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by Guest »

Thanks again to all for identifying the cause. I set dom.indexedDB.enabled to true and it fixed everything for me.

So what are all the places that sites use to track for ads and data mining and such. Cookies, cache, memory, Flash storage, dom storage, html5 storage, indexedDB.. ? Firefox seems to get worse in giving the user control over things.
wulfwulf
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2015 3:50 am

Re: [FF settings] ABP broken in Firefox 35

Post by wulfwulf »

Yes, I have the same issue. Firefox 35 has totally shagged Adblock Plus. It doesn't show up anywhere, the Addons/Extensions configuration page doesn't work any more, it's bricked. No ads are blocked.
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