Adblock Plus 0.6 needs a new name

guido · Post by **guido** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 9:36 pm

Quote "btw, i don't know where you got you're information, but mcm already said, he will keep bugfixing and maintaining ADP0.5, it won't be doomed!" Unquote

It will be doomed because AB standard and ABP0.5 will eventually be the same extension again - really they are partially, they share the core code and the GUID - so people will eventually use only one of them. And it will be AB standard because ABP0.5 will not have any new feature and cannot be loaded in UMO.

MCM never intended to develop a new branch, only to keep alive AB when its development stopped suddenly, for this reason he did not change the GUI. And he has promised bugfixing and Fx releases updating, but no new developments - and it looks sensible, because new developments will be implemented in AB standard.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 10:28 pm

been using 6.0. sidebar is stupid and it's slower and worse than 5.0.

007 · Post by **007** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 11:54 pm

Wladimir Palant wrote:@Guest: How about a very stupid suggestion - why don't you write your comments somewhere where I *can* read them? The "very avidly staff members" are very right - AMO comments aren't a support board and I don't always see them even if they are not removed.

PS: Just in case you did it already - I can't distinguish one user calling himself "Guest" from another one doing the same. Posting under some recognizable name (even when not registering) generally is a good idea.

Wladimir, the staff is writing that this is no support board, but many comments don't have to to something in this way. It's just a stupid excuse for the staff to remove it because of the bad comment (in many civilizations called "critic"). I thought that we should rate and put our comment at the Mozilla Update page, and that it should be some kind of feedback for you. Don't you think that this is the best place for suggestions?

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 12:07 am

guido wrote:Quote "btw, i don't know where you got you're information, but mcm already said, he will keep bugfixing and maintaining ADP0.5, it won't be doomed!" Unquote

It will be doomed because AB standard and ABP0.5 will eventually be the same extension again - really they are partially, they share the core code and the GUID - so people will eventually use only one of them. And it will be AB standard because ABP0.5 will not have any new feature and cannot be loaded in UMO.

MCM never intended to develop a new branch, only to keep alive AB when its development stopped suddenly, for this reason he did not change the GUI. And he has promised bugfixing and Fx releases updating, but no new developments - and it looks sensible, because new developments will be implemented in AB standard.

Now you sounds like some kind of religious fanatic. You are using the word "doom" to often for a still popular software (what do you say next time? That the world will end if we still use Adblock Plus 0.5?

). From my p.o.v. Adblock Plus 0.5 has everything I need, and the "development" of Adblock Plus 0.6 just had the consequence to remove all the "useless" functions of Adblock Plus 0.5 (ok, I won't miss DIV-blocking, never used it before, but nice to have the choice). And btw, at the actual state Adblock Plus 0.6 doesn't have local language support, and the sidebar is more than ugly. Perhaps little things, but nothing what I would call improvement. Perhaps it will be in future versions, perhaps not. I can just judge about things I see with my own eyes.

Tom Brombadil · Post by **Tom Brombadil** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 12:09 am

Anonymous wrote:been using 6.0. sidebar is stupid and it's slower and worse than 5.0.

Yeah, I hate this sidebar, too. This is really no improvement. I like the old solution from 0.5, by simply clicking on the nice status bar icon to see all blocked sites.

El Macho · Post by **El Macho** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 12:18 am

Wladimir Palant wrote:@Guest: I do care about the comments of anybody who installed Adblock Plus 0.6, tried using it for at least 10 minutes and can tell me why he didn't like it. I don't care about anybody crying out "there are sooooo much less features now" or "this is not the real thing" without even naming his problems. So far I have added almost every feature where somebody could explain why it is needed. I even think of adding a minimal "DIV blocking" functionality (not the powerful thing I'm talking about in http://adblockplus.mozdev.org/faq.html#divblock but enough for most of the trivial tasks the old DIV blocking was used for). With 0.6.1 in a few days we should have full feature parity with Adblock Plus 0.5 - not counting some useless ones.

So please tell me - what am I throwing away? People who name their problems mostly complain about the unfamiliar user interface. But the old crappy user interface was shared between Adblock and Adblock Plus 0.5 - no Adblock Plus trademarks here.

Btw - yes, ratings are meaningless. The rating system is no religion, it is a solution that has its obvious shortcomings.

Okay Wlad, here are somethings I don't like:
1) The sidebar (I find this solution annoying, because it always switches away from my standard sidebar, which I simply open with the Optimoz Tweaks extension)
2) Status icon (in the version I saw there was no status bar icon like in Adblock Plus 0.5)
3) No local language support (well, in Adblock Plus 0.5 Ive got it)
4) Cockroach symbol (really, I don't like this)

That's what I disliked so far and why I still use Adblock Plus 0.5. And I'm also for renaming it into "Adblock Lite". Perhaps you make some kind of voting.

Macaco · Post by **Macaco** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 12:23 am

Really Wladimir, can you tell us, why you believe that your extension should be called "Adblock Plus" further? You removed the "Plus" features (good or bad, who knows it) that's what you've wanted. But why do you still want to use a name that always will let people compare to the old version? I also think it's time for a new way, but start it wit ha new name and not with the name of a dead extension.

Read · Post by **Read** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 2:41 am

"With 0.6.1 in a few days we should have full feature parity with Adblock Plus 0.5 - not counting some useless ones."

so left is some icon/GUI problems? Why waste his and your own time with nitpicking?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:51 am

Macaco wrote:Really Wladimir, can you tell us, why you believe that your extension should be called "Adblock Plus" further? You removed the "Plus" features (good or bad, who knows it) that's what you've wanted. But why do you still want to use a name that always will let people compare to the old version? I also think it's time for a new way, but start it wit ha new name and not with the name of a dead extension.

Let's go with a timeline here, mcm added whitelisting, and version compatibility, and called it ABP0.5. ABP0.6 is current version compatible and has whitelisting.

So, the real question for the crazed zealot in you would be, are you wrong, or was mcm?

Let it stew for a while.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 5:56 am

And for the rest of you out there, the sidebar is already detachable, and it remembers it's previous position and size, so we should be able to drop all the "the sidebar is stupid and ugly and it's different and I love rue a little too much" nonsense.

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 1:02 pm

@El Macho:
1) I'm well aware of the problem, that's why I solved it already - the sidebar is detachable (see development builds or 0.6.1 when it is out). If you detach the sidebar it is not much different from the old separate window approach. Usually it shouldn't be necessary to detach the sidebar though.
2) I consider replacing the text in the status bar by an icon. So far I've heard quite different opinions on this issue though.
3) As is stated almost everywhere by now - localization support is there, but there are no translations for 0.6.0. There is a good reason for this: there have been too many user interface changes, keeping translations in sync would be too difficult. Adblock Plus 0.6.1 will have translations, I'm going to do a few myself.
4) Well, there is a simple solution for this - somebody should propose a better icon. Everything I've seen so far was either ugly or didn't really associate with Adblock or both.

@Macaco: Can you tell me what exactly I removed? Whitelisting, toolbar button, context menu on the status bar - all there. I'm almost finished testing filter subscriptions (formerly "synchronization"). Localizations will be there soon. DIV blocking - I think I will add a minimal support for it soon (without the numerous problems from ABP 0.5 though). Am I missing something from the changelogs?

On the other hand: the sidebar is a big "Plus", it gives you a dynamic view - you can jump between tabs, do something on the page, go to a different page, and you will see the list changing immediately. Most of the user interface behaves the way you would expect it to behave - IMO this is also a big "Plus".

Almost all the features I removed and that I'm not going to take back are from original Adblock. Can you name them? Most probably you can't because you didn't even know they existed. The whole idea of ABP 0.6 is to get rid of all the crap from original Adblock while still keeping the good things (lots of those go back to mcm).

Macaco · Post by **Macaco** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:05 pm

Wladimir Palant wrote: @Macaco: Can you tell me what exactly I removed? Whitelisting, toolbar button, context menu on the status bar - all there. I'm almost finished testing filter subscriptions (formerly "synchronization"). Localizations will be there soon. DIV blocking - I think I will add a minimal support for it soon (without the numerous problems from ABP 0.5 though). Am I missing something from the changelogs?.

Perhaps I was really a bit harsh to you. "Plus" features had been whitelisting, DIV-blocking and Obj-Tabs. I must confess that I really didn't use the last 2 ones, but I liked the flash overlay (with the hotkey [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[F]), I didn't find this in your extension. When you say that local language support and status bar icon will also be in future versions I'll trust you. The thing with the sidebar is something that I'll surely test, perhaps you are right and it's a better solution. I'm not one of those who stick to Adblock Plus 0.5 just as a matter of principle, I'm open for new ideas. But at the moment your extension has nothing what let me think that I'll have to switch because of improvements, and that's probably what many of us are thinking. And I also think that you should have choosed another name. Because of your goal to make Adblock lighter it would have been better if you choosed a name to symbolize this like "Adblock Lite".

Wladimir Palant · Post by **Wladimir Palant** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:14 pm

As I said before - discussing names is useless. It is too late to change anything, even if I wished to do so.

Btw, my goal wasn't to make Adblock lighter, I simply wanted to make Adblock less painful.

Anubis · Post by **Anubis** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:28 pm

Wladimir Palant wrote:The whole idea of ABP 0.6 is to get rid of all the crap from original Adblock while still keeping the good things (lots of those go back to mcm).

Getting rid of crap sounds like making it lighter, what seems to be good. Why is it too late to rename it?

Lord Ba'al · Post by **Lord Ba'al** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 3:59 pm

What about the flash overlays? Will it be in future versions? Because I don't like this button saying "Adblock", I've disabled it and use flash overlay, if there is flash ad on a page. The alternative to block this with the sidebar isn't more comfortable. Apropos sidebar, it would be better if blocked sites would appear red and not grey. That whitelisted sites are appearing green is okay and looks better. Detaching the sidebar is a feature that will be great, because I also use Optimoz Tweaks and don't like to load my standard sidebar every time again when I used your Adblock sidebar.