Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Adblock Plus 2.0.1 for Safari released · 7 days ago by Dean Murphy

Adblock Plus 2.0.1 has been made from the ground up to support Safari’s native content blocking engine, which is required for ad blocking to function as of Safari 12.0.

The main advantage of using the new content blocking APIs are the significant improvements to the speed and performance of ad blocking capabilities. Using these APIs also means there’s still some ground work to be done to improve the accuracy of what’s being blocked. We’ll be working over time to better optimize our filter list generation to provide a great ad blocking experience.

As this is a newly-built native macOS app, some features from the previous version aren’t available just yet but will be re-introduced with ongoing development.

Changes

Added filter list management
Added user controlled whitelisting
Added ‘Help Page’ with support/social links
Added user controlled whitelisting in toolbar extension UI
Added on-boarding instructions
Added automated removal of legacy ABP extension
Fixed whitelist UI not updating in some instances

Adblock Plus for Samsung Internet 1.1.6 released · 11 days ago by Mario König

Install Adblock Plus for Samsung Internet 1.1.6

Changes

Added support for the following language: Chinese. (Issue 6785)

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Tags: adblock plus sbrowser releases

Adblock Plus 3.3.2 for Chrome and Opera released · 16 days ago by Manish Jethani

Install Adblock Plus 3.3.2 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 3.3.2 for Opera

This release introduces the new hide-if-contains-and-matches-style snippet (issue 6919), which enables filter list authors to tackle a specific technique used by some websites to circumvent ad blocking using invisible ad labels.

Adblock Plus 3.3.1 for Chrome, Firefox and Opera released · 27 days ago by Manish Jethani

Install Adblock Plus 3.3.1 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 3.3.1 for Firefox
Install Adblock Plus 3.3.1 for Opera

This release adds a couple of improvements to the Adblock Plus snippets.

Changes

Added regular expression support to the hide-if-contains and hide-if-shadow-contains snippets (issue 6847).
Added support to the hide-if-contains snippet for hiding a different ancestor of the element containing the search string (issue 6848).

Adblock Plus 3.3 for Chrome, Firefox and Opera released · 29 days ago by Manish Jethani

Install Adblock Plus 3.3 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 3.3 for Firefox
Install Adblock Plus 3.3 for Opera

This release features our own anti-circumvention filter list. It also includes a new experimental feature called “Snippets,” which lets us deploy specialized scripts selectively on one or more domains. We have also taken steps to reduce memory usage and further improve the performance of element hiding emulation.

Changes

Added the new ABP anti-circumvention filter list (issues 6689, 6699 and 6731).
Added basic support for snippets (issues 6781 and 6782).
The $rewrite filter option now accepts a blank value (issue 6787).
Trailing dots in domain names are now always ignored (issue 6690).
Element hiding emulation now correctly qualifies compound selectors in the document’s style sheet (issue 6619).
The :-abp-properties() pseudo-class now responds correctly to dynamic DOM updates (issue 6680).
The $elemhide whitelisting filter option now works for documents with an unknown parent frame (issue 6808).
Fixed the rendering of SVG icons on the options page for mobile (issue 6866).
Reduced the initial memory footprint by ~8% (issues 6727 and 6735).
Further improved the performance of element hiding emulation (issue 6437).
Fixed a compatibility issue on Chrome 49 (issue 6823).

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Tags: adblock plus adblock plus chrome

Adblock Plus 1.12.5 for Safari released · 56 days ago by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 1.12.5 for Safari

Changes

Restored limited compatibility with Safari 12, and prepared to notify users to migrate to our new Safari App Extension (issue 6786).
Worked around an issue with pre-rendered tabs that caused ads not to be blocked and potentially other issues, in an edge case scenario (issue 3200).
Fixed key-based whitelisting, which was broken since the previous release (issue 4902).
Improved Content Blockers support (issue 5464).

Adblock Plus 3.2 for Chrome, Firefox and Opera released · 71 days ago by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 3.2 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 3.2 for Firefox
Install Adblock Plus 3.2 for Opera

This release features the new $rewrite filter option which enables filter list authors to prevent (mostly pre-roll video) ads that couldn’t be blocked before from showing on some websites, as well as improvements to the issue reporter, and a couple other improvements and bug fixes.

Changes

Added the $rewrite filter option (issue 6592 and issue 6622).
Blocked elements are now hidden through a style sheet if possible rather than by overriding their style attribute (issue 6645).
Stopped converting domains reported by the browser to Unicode, expecting domains in filters being given in Punycode (issue 6647).
Fixed: Requests were matched in the wrong context when navigating to a document served by a Service Worker (issue 6595).
Fixed a regression introduced with the previous release that caused the number in the icon badge to show even if that feature was disabled (issue 6679).
Added information about filter hits and related requests to issue reports (issue 6386).
Removed the title field when adding a subscription by URL (issue 6532).
Formatted dates on the options page based on the current locale (issue 6661).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Fixed blocking of WebRTC connections and the related error shown in the console on Chrome 67 (respectively Opera 54) and above (issue 6744).

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Tags: adblock plus adblock plus chrome

Adblock Plus 3.1 for Chrome, Firefox and Opera released · 133 days ago by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 3.1 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 3.1 for Firefox
Install Adblock Plus 3.1 for Opera

This release features the new $csp filter option which equips filter lists authors with yet another tool to counter ad blocking circumvention on some websites, as well as a mechanism for system administrators to pre-configure Adblock Plus on Firefox, along other improvements and bug fixes.

Changes

Added the $csp filter option (issue 5241).
Requests sent by Shared/Service Workers are now matched in the context of the document that caused the worker to spawn, i.e. requests sent from the worker are now also subject to document-based whitelisting and domain-specific filters (issue 6543).
Users with corrupted storage are now notified and instructed to reinstall Adblock Plus (issue 6599).
Fixed: Videos (and other media elements) remained hidden if they previously attempt to stream a blocked resource (e.g. a pre-roll ad) but then changed their URL (issue 5899).
Fixed: Exception rules for element hiding emulation filters were considered invalid when adding custom filters (issue 6139).
Improved performance of element hiding emulation filters (issue 6437).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Requests sent by the browser itself or by Adblock Plus are no longer subject to request blocking (issue 6544). This is now consistent with the behavior on Firefox, and prevents a dysfunctional state in case of misconfiguration or overly greedy rules in filter lists.

Firefox-only changes

Added support for pre-configurable preferences (issue 6474).
Prevented third-party style sheets from breaking element hiding emulation filters (issue 6382).
Worked around the limitations of notifications on Firefox (issue 6496).

Adblock Plus 3.0.4 for Firefox released · 158 days ago by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 3.0.4 for Firefox

When we recently released Adblock Plus 3.0.3, we accidentally pushed the build for Chrome and Opera to our Firefox users as well (instead of uploading the Firefox-specific build to AMO). This caused the update page intended for Chrome and Opera users only, to show on Firefox as well (issue 6604), along some other potential issues.

We just pushed the correct build to our Firefox users as Adblock Plus 3.0.4. There are no changes compared to the build that was supposed to be released as Adblock Plus 3.0.3 in the first place.

We apologize to our users that got unintentionally bothered by the update page, or experienced any other issues due to this incident since yesterday.

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Tags: adblock plus releases

Adblock Plus 3.0.3 for Chrome, Firefox and Opera rolled out progressively · 169 days ago by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 3.0.3 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 3.0.3 for Firefox
Install Adblock Plus 3.0.3 for Opera

This is the first combined release for Chrome, Opera and Firefox since the troublesome migration to Firefox Web Extensions. This marks a major release for Chrome and Opera, notably including the redesigned Settings page, along with many other improvements. However, there isn’t as much an impact for Firefox users, updating from the previous version. It’s mostly a bug fix release for them.

This release will be rolled out progressively. Today, we started to update 5% of our existing Chrome users. New users installing Adblock Plus from the Chrome Web Store will get the latest version as well. If all goes well, we will push the update out to Firefox, Opera and the remaining Chrome users next week. The reason for rolling this release out in stages is that we want to ensure the new Settings page design is well received.

Changes

Improved element hiding emulation filters.
- Fixed false positives and related memory leak in dynamically changing documents (issue 5864).
- Added regular expression support for :-abp-contains() (issue 6034).
- Added support for relative prefix within :-abp-has() (issue 6296).
Fixed empty error message when adding invalid custom filter (issue 6417).
Removed the social media buttons from the ABP icon menu (issue 5613).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Replaced the Settings page with new user experience (issue 6403).
Added an update page, announcing the new Settings page (issue 5943).
Added an issue reporter for inaccurately blocked content (issue 5880).
Started using user style sheets on Chrome 66 (respectively Opera 53) and above, in order to hide elements more reliably (issue 242).
Fixed element hiding emulation filters on Chrome 50 (respectively Opera 37) and below (issue 5773).
Made the “Block element” option unavailable when navigating to the Chrome Web Store (issue 6191).
Worked around limitations of notifications on Opera (issue 5354).

Firefox-only changes

Fixed a bug causing pages to be rendered blank when Web Components are enabled (issue 6441).
Fixed the “Block element” dialog on Firefox 51 (issue 6113).
Fixed links in the mobile Settings page, seen on Android (issue 6199).
Fixed: Message about whitelisted domain is shown repeatedly on the Settings page (issue 6420).
Improved performance when adding large number of custom filters (issue 6440).

Update (2018-04-18): We proceeded with the progressive roll out, making the update available to all Chrome users. The update for Firefox and Opera will still follow.

Update (2018-04-21): Yesterday, we pushed out the update to Firefox users, but did a mistake which lead to releasing Adblock Plus 3.0.4, today. We also just pushed out the update to Opera users.