The Adblock Project

[wonkothesane]

All right. I've spent the past day or so hacking around with rue's latest n37 release, and have come up with an improved version.

Issues fixed from/improvements over vanilla n37:

*Repackaged for 0.9 EM, maintaining backwards-compatibility
* iFrame collapsation no longer broken (no white pages [ versiontracker.com ] , no crashes in mozilla on slashdot.org with the filter /[\/.]ads?[\/.]/)
* Fixed dragging to allow statusbar element to be dragged to the edges of the statusbar.
* Added dynamic contextmenu to statusbar element that allows for enabling/disabling adblock straight from the mouse.</li>
* Added preliminary About and Getting Started dialogs/help pages.</li>
* Added (functioning) Load Default Filters from Web menuitem.</li>
* Reworked Adblock-able Items dialog to have an Add button and a Close Dialog button, rather than OK and Cancel. Allows more than one filter addition without reopening the dialog.</li>
* My server also serves .XPI files as application/x-xpinstall, whereas rue's .Mac account seems to be serving them as application/octetstream ( ok, that one's a stretch )

There are probably some other changes in there, but it's 3 AM and my brain is shutting down. I'll check back here tomorrow afternoon when I wake up. Post any issues you encounter and I'll look into a fix.

There are one or two issues which I'm already aware of (very minor bugs), but I can't really recall them at the moment. Obj-tabs and Overlay Flash are both nonfunctional, unchanged from vanilla n37.


Anyways, here's the new file:
http://www.eschew.org/misc/firefox/adblock.n37-repackaged01.xpi

[mark]

Thanks!!

Gonna test it now!

[mark]

Doesn't work .
Installed into profile dir.

Using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040521 Firefox/0.8.

[Guest]

[wonkothesane]

You'll almost certainly need to use a fresh profile for this to work right... sorry for not mentioning that earlier.

If it persists in not working even with a fresh install/profile, let me know what your UA string is and I'll download that build and test it.

Also verified with

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040514 Firefox/0.8.0+

It shouldn't matter where you install it.

{edit} I'm in the process of getting the server to serve XPI files as mimetype application/x-xpinstall, but for now, you'll want to save the XPI file to your hard drive and install it from there. {/edit}

[koniu]

neither this version nor the one from adblock.mozdev.org version works with either of:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040515 Firefox/0.8.0+
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040521 Firefox/0.8.0+
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040522 Firefox/0.8.0+

0515 was my own cvs build with gtk2+xft
052x were gtk2+xft nightlies from ftp.mozilla.org

no difference when installed in the global dir.
each test was done with a clean install - untouched rootdir, null profile.

[mark]

Well I'm using a nightly from 2 days ago - shouldn't be a problem?

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040521 Firefox/0.8

[Sven]

I tested the patched Adblock with Seamonkey 1.8a 20040523. The new version does not break Mozilla anymore but it does not filter any content. Also the list when clicking on the Adblock "button" is empty.

[Konul]

It is like Sven descriped it: U can still brwose with the Plugin, but it is doesnt filter at all. the filter list is always emty, and "AdBlock Image" when u klick on images has no function.

maybe some more api calls need to be fixed.

[wonkothesane]

Yes, I noticed that it didn't actually work a bit after releasing the second patched version.

I'll work on it for a while and see if I can hunt down the changed APIs, though I probably won't get done much today as I have a paper due tomorrow for school.

I can get filterlist entries to persist, but almost everything else seems borked.

My apologies for being premature with my releases of the patched versions.

[wonkothesane]

ping! check out the first message (just click here:)

http://aasted.org/adblock/viewtopic.php?p=2507#2507

[joe]

The updated adblock does not work with the latest version of firefox for the mac. Just FYI.

[koniu]

first of all, wonkothesane, let thy name be praised for doing this!
yes, this means that i confirm that it works now.

the bug you've described is there but it also seems to produce a crash with my firefox (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040515 Firefox/0.8.0+)

also the list of all blockable elements is always empty, with any site. only when i block something through right-click it gets a single entry of the element that was blocked. anybody else suffering from that? (if not - what nightly u use?)

otherwise, everything seems just perfect.

[koniu]

ah, one more thing - as you said, the crash doesn't occur when i switch from "remove ads" to "hide ads", but then the hidden elements don't get collapsed which disables one of the finest features of adblock

[koniu]

ok. the blocked ads (hidden) do sometimes get collapsed. but not always. i couldn't figure out the circumstances.

next - flash elements don't have this nice "adblock" button. it was a nice feature, now i have to use this ugly "overlay flash" way

finally - if you do "adblock image" with one refered through relative url, you get only this relative part of url in "add adblock filter" dialogue which is not really the way it should be.

[Tony]

[wonkothesane]

Thank you for the good bugtesting, koniu.

I've gotten almost everything working well, certainly all the major components; same URL @ eschew.org but new XPI

I'll work on getting the minor things fixed next.

[Guest]

I get a "Not a valid install package" when I attempt to install this.

[wonkothesane]

[koniu]

a suggestion and some findings with "fourth update"

a suggestion is: wonkonthesane, it would be neat if you upgraded a version string with each release. add -wots<incremental-number> or sth like that. this won't hurt and might prevent some mess in the future.

now the findings.
first of all, i can't get the debug version to install. my firefox (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040515 Firefox/0.8.0+) bails out as soon as i click OK on the "extension installed, please restart yr browser" dialogue. on the system console i get:

[koniu]

oh and it seems that the remove+collapse crash (like with /.) doesn't occur anymore.

this would mean that the only issue i see is this broken flash ("adblock" tab shows up, but the flash element itself not) thing.

...which implies that you're my hero!

[kmike]

Non-debug fourth update indeed blocks content in Linux SeaMonkey 20040526 build, but I can't add new filter via "list all blockable elements in thi s page" command.
I see this error in javascript console:

[kmike]

Another interesting but so far harmless(?) bug.
Steps to reproduce:

1. Add this to filter list:
/\W(cy|r)?c(ou)?nt(er|ed)?\W/

2. Righ click this URL: http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1085056751&count=1
and select "open link in new tab"
observe blank page in new tab (this wasn't the case before new ContentPolicy - the blocked page itself loaded fine before, but I guess new behaviour makes sense)

3. open javascript console, observe this error:

[Guest]

[wonkothesane]

[wonkothesane]

[anonymous2]

thanks wonkothesane for all the work, what's the url of the latest patch/update for adblock?

[wonkothesane]

[kmike]

Yes, its a very good idea to add versioning to patched adblock.

So, I installed adblock-patched05.xpi, but I still can't add new items via ctrl-shift-A command. Get the same Javascript error:

[wonkothesane]

[lethal_falcon]

I've noticed this problem for quite some time now with all the builds I've tried (both firefox and adblock). You can pull up the adblock-able items window, but when you click on any of the elements, it no longer adds it to the New Filter textbox. Manually typing in the address does work for me.

I think there should be an add button in that window as well, so that you can block multiple items from the window with just a couple of clicks (instead of adding one, clicking ok, opening it back up, adding another, etc.). At least with the latest builds the patched version is working again to an extent.

Keep up the good work!
_________________
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040527 Firefox/0.8.0+ (stipe)

adblock-patched06.xpi

[kmike]

lethal_falcon:
I believe you're describing the very same bug we're discussing

wonkothesane:
Yes, no more loadURI exceptions with patched05 version. Thank you for quick fix
My UA is Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040526.

[kmike]

[rue]

Everyone:
Just a quick heads-up:
.
The "patched" build is not the future of Adblock. It's a good tide-over until n37; but the reason it's failing is the cumbersome nature of its design -- essentially maintaining two copies of code for the differing APIs.
.
n37 addresses the APIs in a unified manner, minimizing overhead. Where n37 fails is the same place the unreleased n36 did. Amusingly, it's been held-up due to lack of a proper test-box -- an issue that should shortly be resolved. Btw, moz1.3.1 under macOs 9 runs n37 fine. You can scope the latest source here:

n37 test.ii . (right-click:save): Installer, and jar-file.
[ This is not linked for install. Only download if you're interested in the source. ]

Travels, graduations, and other events did beckon away for a time. But I'm on top of all pertinent threads, and development has resumed. Keep it here.

[koniu]

**woohoo**

[koniu]

but on a [second] thought....

i've installed n37 with a fresh profile and it breaks my browser in the same manner n35 did - 'adblock' button appears in a bottom right(!) corner of the window and i can enter an url into the address bar but i can't get it to load thus the browser is unusable.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040526 Firefox/0.8.0+

getting back to wonkothesane's patch which might not be the future, but seems to be the presence

[rue]

koniu:
As indicated, it is known to fail ( - though for different reasons than n35). I only linked because there are curious individuals and we've always been open with progress.
.
Install the patched build if you need it. It's a good interim.
.
Note: the status-element was always intended to be Right aligned. Because I develop under 1.3.1, I didn't know it appeared wrongly under recent builds. n36 introduced drag-relocation, so when we're final you can just kick it how you like.

[wonkothesane]

Rue is,of course correct in his observation that this patched version is just that, a patched version that has been intended as a temporary salve until the official version worked correctly.

I think I disagree as to saying that the code is failing due to "cumbersome" design; I think it (was/is) failing because I changed pieces of code I shouldn't have, the fact that it's almost all trial-and-error for me, learning as I go, and that I have nothing in the way of comprehensive unit testing. I think I've created over fifty patched XPIs from modified source as part of that trial and error process.

The two component.js file solution may not be terribly elegant, but it does have two notable advantages, the first being that it works. That's not to say that it working is due to the design of the solution, but instead it's more directly related to the second advantage, that being that it separates the logic reqiured to support the two APIs, allowing for uninhibited adaptation to the new API while preserving the logic of the old, and eventually allowing the two to be merged into a common logic base, which is what n37 is soon going to be.

Even though there is quite a bit of duplicated code, the ZIP compression means that the patched XPI is only 10-15 KB larger than n35. And actually, rue, on the subject of duplicated code... pot kettle black? True. it's not 40+ KB of duplicated code, but adblock does have quite a few copied-and-pasted code sections.

Of course, the irony of this is that, because rue doesn't actually have browsers with the new API to test on, one can postulate that I've probably delayed the release of n37 by a few days by working with the old codebase instead of the new one. Still, I feel that that influence is offset by the experience and familiarity I've gained with the code, which should hopefully mean less time for me to get n37 working and submit the changes to rue, should they be needed.


On the subject of n35 and the patched version, I think I'll probably only release maybe one more update (investigation into repackaging for 0.9 and hopefully a forced reflow after adding a filter via addfilter.xul. Due to the scrapping of install.js, replaced by install.rdf, I'm not sure off the top of my head whether two separate component.js files can actually be used; they probably can, but I'm at school right now and will have to wait to get home before I can verify or disprove my intution.)


Also, rue: is there any possibilty of packaging a default dozen or so filters with new installations of adblock, so that it can start blocking ads "right out of the box"? I think that this would help adblock appeal to a wider, non-technical audience.

Bell just rung, so I've gotta go.[/b]

[rue]

wonko:
..it's almost all trial-and-error for me..
I tried not to directly state, but "cumbersome nature" was meta-implicating your capacity. I could see you were getting a feel for things by the comments / typos (.DefaultView ;P)
.
Per n37, I may have found a better solution than eval'ing different strings for the origContentPolicy calls. It seems the following syntax is permitted:

[kmike]

[Guest]

[wonkothesane]

Oops, that last post was by me. rue, do you think you could edit out the long URLs?

And I found the fix.


in filterall.js->init()

[iwpg]

[rue]

wonko:
n37 is basically ready to go.
.
Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any way to use the "extra" parameter with the May 28th nightly. Even passing a generic nsISupports doesn't work. n36 actually introduced a use for this, so I guess we'll be hijacking the mimeTypeGuess. If you have a moment, try verifying this with another nightly / firefox.
.
Btw, nice call on the tree-selection change.


iwpg:
It's partly the tradeoff between readability and overhead, and partly just trying new stuff. For the particular case of origContentPolicy(), you're right- it's easier to pass everything as we got it. But, I was also applying it to the policy-call in "addfilterdialog.js" and "filterall.js" -- there, it's actually pretty useful.

[rue]

The wait is over:

n37 pass 3 . (right-click:save): Installer, and jar-file.
[ Obj-Tabs are presently disabled. ]

The obj-tab issue actually isn't related to n36.
.
I was just installing Java (for object-enablement) when windows went crazy on the virtual hard-drive. Rather than wait for windows' reinstall, I'll just offer what's done.
.
All that's left is adding EM-packaging and... we'll be at parity with ourselves. Seriously, whitelists are coming. :P

[Sven]

[Guest]

Thanks rue! Good to see you back. New version seems to be working ok so far, but for some reason the AdBlock statusbar button is now on the far righthand side of the statusbar. Is this by design or a bug of some kind? Anyone else seen this? Ever thought of making the AdBlock button a standard button in the customize dialog, so users can place it whereever they want in Fx? I'd love to see "AdBlock" get replaced with a small icon too, making the button smaller, but I think that's been suggested before and I suspect you have more important things to work on than aesthetics right now .

I saw a few AdBlock JS Console errors when I initially installed it as well, followed by a crash. I'm not sure if the crash was adblock related, and I haven't seen any other JS Console errors since then (or crashes). Maybe it was a just a one-time or post-install thing. Not sure, I'll let you know if I see them again.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040526 Firefox/0.8.0+

[Paradox52525]

Dangit I keep getting logged out of this forum whenever I post. That guest was me BTW though...

[wonkothesane]

[wonkothesane]

[DzM]

I'm trying to hit:

http://www.wunderground.com/

The page just doesn't open. Grey screen. Nothing more.

I've reduced the filter set to:

ads

In theory for this page this will match the images that come from the server "ads.wunderground.com". Unfortunately even this extremely simple rule makes the page not display at all. If I change the filter to:

foobar

the page now displays correctly (though obviously all the ads are now intact).

[Guest]

n37 doesn't work at all for me. Firefox trunk starts up fine, and everything's peachy. It's just that there's a conspicuous Adblock button at the bottom right corner instead of the bottom left, and that the filters apparently don't do anything anymore. They say an image is blocked, but I still see it. For reference, I'm on Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040530 Firefox/0.8.0+ (johnleemk) with a fresh profile. I have TBP, Show Failed URL and SessionSaver 0.2d (latest nightly from a few months back) installed.

[Guest]

[Guest]

I confirm that there seems to be a problem with flash in nightly 37. Blocking flash works for me, but the blocked elements are not collapsed. Flashblock does not work, too.

Nightly 35 works perfectly for me.

(Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040521 Firefox/0.8.0+)

[Roller]

... the Adblock configuration in the lower left corner of the browser window is missing too in nightly 37.

Roller

[Guest]

The new about dialog should not be resizeable, and maybe should have a ok button to dismiss it.

You shouldn't hide/kill the preferences window when the about window is opened.

my 2 cents

[Roller]

P.S.: The latest Firefox 0.9 nightly and the latest official Adblock nightly 35 don't cause any problemlos!

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-0.9/

Roller

[Guest]

[rue]

wonko:

You should submit the changes for review, rather than just releasing them.
.
Nothing you've altered is too serious. But the status-context was being reserved, for example -- no need to duplicate the keybinding's functionality. Web install will also be different. The original n37 pass3 (and thus, your patched release) had Not undergone significant testing for the older API. Quite a few things needed subtle alteration, and we've ended up with two completely different builds.
.
Check your pm's on mozillazine. Users prefer simplicity, and not everyone is bleeding-edge: releases should be unified (single source) + completely backwards-compatible.

.
(ps: every time i tried, mozdev refused cvs access. that's why i'm serving off .mac)

[mark]

This build works for me.

[wmc]

I'm glad to see that work is continuing on one of Firefox's best extensions. Does anyone know if there are any immediate plans to add a whitelist feature to adblock. This feature is sorely missed.

[Ray Adams]

Yes its work now for all version of Mozilla ia have, even with last night builds. But where is AdBlock button for Flash animation?

[mark]

[Ray Adams]

I was wrong! 37 doesn't work good. A lot of sites stops to loading when i filter some contents. www.warp2search and much more! And i don't use regular expresions! Just somethink like this http://ads.firingsquad.com* and so on .
I realy need to use last Mozilla releases but without AdBlock it useless for me and niw i stick with old version of Mozilla+(Old)AdBlock. Guys, please! Release fully functional version

[bry]

wonkothesane and rue thanks a ton for your effort on this new version, but as others are saying, it just isn't working.

I agree very strongly with rue about cooperating on a single release track instead of two seperate and possibly incompatible versions.

For other users: the Adblock 0.5 d2 nightly 35 (shown here) works very well with the Aviary branch (even though it isn't 0.9 compatible it functions just fine with recent Aviary nightlies) so I suggest sticking with that until a less-buggy and less feature-breaking release of Adblock comes along.

Good luck rue and wonk

[wonkothesane]

To bry and Ray Adams: are you using rue's n37 or my patched n37? Also, please provide your browser UA string and the sites you're visiting that aren't working, etc.

And yes, rue and I are going to be collaborating on future releases

[bry]

Hi wonk,

yes I was using your n37, the one you added in the first post (http://www.eschew.org/misc/firefox/adblock.n37-repackaged01.xpi)

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040601 Firefox/0.8.0+

Here is a site that your n37 breaks pretty obviously. Using the filters in the sticky 'Advanced Filters' thread.

www.livejournal.com

Good luck!

[dzm]

[Forlorn]

Well, i must say adblock is not installing on my 2 pcs at the office with the lastest build from firefox. The xpi is a selfinstaller, or what?

Adblock is so important to me that I don't update to firefox 0.9 on my home pcs cause it's not running.

[Guest]

Starting with a Mozilla nightly about a day ago the AdBlock button has begun being greyed out with the text "Unloaded". Additionally the Mozilla contextual menu (right click) has all the AdBlock options on the bottom instead of those relevant to the clicked on resource (so at the bottom of the menu is "AdBlock Image," "AdBlock Embed," "AdBlock Object," "AdBlock Applet," "AdBlock iFrame," and "AdBlock Remove Map").

On the off chance that I messed something up I have removed the install of AdBlock and reinstalled the Wonk posted one from the top of this thread. The behavior persists.

My UA is:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040602

[TheOneKEA]

JFYI, workonthesame's patched Adblock works fine on a dirty profile on this build:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040602 Firefox/0.8.0+ (daihard: XFT+GTK2; opt. for P4/SSE-2)

Any chance of a major version bump when 0.9 is minted and the new EM becomes the status quo?

[milkbox]

I'm currently using the 0.5d2 nightly37 pass3 version of Adblock from Sboulema's Extensions Mirror and it breaks http://www.soccerage.com. The page shows up and as soon as it finishes loading, disappears and just keeps on reloading indefinitely with nothing showing up on the screen. As soon as I disable Adblock, things are fine. Other than that, everything seems okay.

I'm running Stipe's 06 June build on Win98. I also tested it on Stipe's 05 June build and Moox's 03 June builds with the same results.

[hank]

Using

http://www.eschew.org/misc/firefox/adblock.n37-repackaged01.xpi

*I don't know if that's the current one or not!?! it's all I knew about*

I have no problems using:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040604 Firefox/0.8.0+ (MMx)

Mac OSX 10.3.4, Powerbook G3 "Pismo" 900mhz PowerLogix, 1024mb RAM.

[milkbox]

[Guest]

vanilla n37 was not worked on Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040608 Firefox/0.8.0+.

I think that cause is Extension-package-method has changed. Do you have any update schedule? I'm sorry if this has already posted.

[Guest]

[Guest]

[Guest]

[Guest]

[Sander]

Flashblock does not work either in 0.9RC1 with the patched .37.

[Guest]

[Guest]

[quote="rue"]Everyone:
Just a quick heads-up:
.
The "patched" build is not the future of Adblock. It's a good tide-over until n37; but the reason it's failing is the cumbersome nature of its design -- essentially maintaining two copies of code for the differing APIs.
.
n37 addresses the APIs in a unified manner, minimizing overhead. Where n37 [i]fails[/i] is the same place the unreleased n36 did. Amusingly, it's been held-up due to lack of a proper test-box -- an issue that should shortly be resolved. Btw, moz1.3.1 under macOs 9 runs n37 fine. You can scope the latest source here: <blockquote>[color=darkred]n37 test.ii[/color] . ([i]right-click:save[/i]): <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/rue/Adblock/test-viii/adblock-0.5-dev.xpi">Installer</a>, and <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/rue/Adblock/test-viii/adblock.jar">jar-file</a>.
[ This is not linked for install. Only download if you're interested in the source. ]</blockquote> Travels, graduations, and other events did beckon away for a time. But I'm on top of all pertinent threads, and development has resumed. Keep it here.[/quote]

[Guest]