We are back
As you probably noticed, the distribution update yesterday didn’t go as planned. For some reason, the new operating system confused the virtual server manager enough that it refused to start the...
View ArticleOn the pop-up blocker in Adblock Plus
There is a semi-hidden new feature in Adblock Plus 2.0: a pop-up blocker. I wanted to explain what this feature is about and why there are no big announcements about it. The built-in pop-up blocker...
View ArticleRandom thoughts on democracy and Russian presidential election
As some of you might know, Russia sort of elected a new old president a week ago. After taking a 4 years break as prime minister Putin now becomes Russian president for the third time. I’ve been...
View ArticleUpcoming and past changes to application compatibility
Starting with version 2.0 Adblock Plus requires at least Firefox 3.6.13 to be installed (or Thunderbird 3.1.7 or SeaMonkey 2.1). We really don’t support earlier Firefox 3.6 versions because of a...
View ArticleUsing asynchronous file I/O in Gecko
I’ve finally decided to start using asynchronous file I/O in Adblock Plus (probably about time). I didn’t expect this to be too complicated, mostly messy because of all the callbacks. Well, I was...
View ArticlePreventing background tabs from wasting your computer's resources
Taras recently blogged on how websites manage to ruin Firefox performance by continuing to do something even though their tab is no longer active — they keep updating the view that you cannot see. He...
View ArticleClosed my LinkedIn account
A bunch of posts on Planet Mozilla reminded me that there is still one social network that I am a member of. So it was time to reconsider whether having a LinkedIn account was worth it. Pros: I get to...
View ArticleWhere did the Adblock Plus unit tests go?
You probably asked yourself already what happened to the Adblock Plus unit tests. What? You didn’t? You don’t even know what unit tests are? Oops… Sorry about having bothered you. I guess nobody is...
View ArticleWhy you should make your next add-on restartless
Note: This article is not about extensions based on the Add-on SDK (Jetpack). You don’t have to use the SDK to create a restartless extension. Just wanted to point this out explicitly to avoid...
View ArticleModularization in a restartless extension
A simple restartless extension can probably keep all its code in the bootstrap.js file. However, it gets crowded there very soon. Plus there is some code that is really only boilerplate and should...
View ArticleRemoving Do-Not-Track support from Adblock Plus
I still believe that the Do-Not-Track proposal is the most promising idea to let users opt out of tracking, it offers some value even to the people using Adblock Plus with the EasyPrivacy filter list....
View ArticleTranslating Adblock Plus: Dumping Babelzilla for Crowdin
The Adblock Plus project has been using Babelzilla for translations for more than six years. Yet, time has come to change that. Two days ago I moved the translations for all my extensions from...
View ArticleTypo correction feature in Adblock Plus
Lots of Adblock Plus users were complaining about unintentionally landing on web pages that tried to use their mistake by either showing ads to them or even by installing malware. We heard you and...
View ArticleSorry about the server outage
Following the Adblock Plus 2.2 release yesterday our server became pretty much unreachable. This was the result of the new typo correction feature downloading its database. Unfortunately, while I was...
View ArticleNew adblockplus.org
As of now, the new adblockplus.org is finally online. These were some of our goals for the new website: More appealing, yet simple design Better navigation A decent mobile version Should work in any...
View ArticleImproving subscriptions download infrastructure
As some people probably noticed, our roadmap page hasn’t been updated in a while. I originally used it to communicate what I am working on and what my priorities currently are — but one centralized...
View ArticleSimplifying subscription downloads module
The module responsible for updating subscriptions is one of the most complicated components of Adblock Plus, also one that is notoriously complicated to test properly. Much of the code here is outdated...
View ArticleForward compatibility of filters
Current state A small number of our users stays on outdated Adblock Plus versions forever, e.g. 0.5% are still on Adblock Plus 0.7.* (mostly 0.7.5.5). There are similar numbers for Adblock Plus 1.3.10...
View ArticleAdblock Plus for Android issues with the latest Jelly Bean updates
As you might have noticed, Adblock Plus for Android no longer works out of the box on non-rooted devices running Android 4.1.2 or 4.2.2, it’ll show a warning asking you to manually configure the proxy...
View ArticleAdblock Plus for Android removed from Google Play store
In a rather surprising move, Google removed Adblock Plus and other ad blocking apps from the Google Play store due to “interference with another service or product in an unauthorized manner.” This...
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