Issues in the new ABP (version 3) for firefox

[tovian]

Yesterday I tried Firefox Quantum (57) on Windows-10. I liked it. Then, when I tried to add AdblockPlus and Element Hiding Helper I discovered that Element Hiding Helper is no longer (not yet) supported for Quantum. I uninstalled Firefox-57 and re-installed 56. Then I added Element Hiding Helper. It is totally unfamiliar. I've tried working through it but, after all the research I've done on this product over the years, after all the hours I've spent customizing my environment, after all the hours I've spent studying (and learning) how to work the Element Hiding Helper product - ALL THAT TIME IS NOW DOWN THE TOILET.

What I see now has all the appearance of the project manager allowing the techs (Devs) to design the "Next Generation". They may understand it and know how it works, but folks like me find it unusable.

I hope you bring back the old methodology - or (and this would be very sad) - I hope someone will fork the previous release and leave you guys in the dust.

Some years back I found this truly helpful product named Element Hiding Helper. Now it's gone.

[lewisje]

The "project manager" (Wladimir Palant) was behind this effort too, and it all started because Mozilla developed a new extension system, because it found out that its original one (and the two it created after that) would not work with the multi-process architecture that was promised for years (about half the lifetime of Firefox so far, shortly after Chrome appeared with multi-process right out of the gate).

Fortunately, Palant & Co. had something to work off of, because this new extension API was similar to the Chrome extension API, and they had already taken over AdThwart from Tom Joseph, one of the first two ad-blocking extensions for Chrome (from before the browser even had a proper request-filtering API), and re-branded it as "Adblock Plus for Google Chrome"; the team had long wanted to make this extension feature-compatible with ABP for Firefox, and they still haven't gotten that working out, and they're still trying to get that working out, both in Chrome and now in Firefox Quantum.

[tovian]

lewisje » Sat Nov 18, 2017 7:43 am
The "project manager" (Wladimir Palant) was behind this effort too.......

That's all well and good - but it changes nothing. The best that both Firefox and Adblock apparently can come up with is still a mess (IMHO). I suspect you folks will be joining in that group of products that "noticed they are losing market share".

One fact is certain: when you step on long-time, very loyal users like this you terminate ALL INCENTIVE for them to (continue to) contribute to your project.

Not only do I now have to find a replacement (if there is one) for Adblock Plus - I also have to remove it from so many client computers, install the replacement on those, teach a lot of non-technical people to use a new product that I have no experience with, and on, and on.

I consider the current state of Adblock Plus a very poor result from what has, for many years, been a high-productivity and high-quality tool.

I have no more time to inquire or complain. I MUST move on. By the time you folks straighten this out many of us will be in bed with a new product and will never look back.

[lewisje]

Thanks for the flounce, try uBlock Origin.

[Roninnin]

Hi,

Is there a way to temporarily disable AdBlock Plus (not just white list a page) like in the previous version?
I sometimes need to see ads for various projects but don't want to see them all the time. For now, my only option is to go through the "module" panel.

[mapx]

For now there is no possibility to completely disable ABP (like in the old versions "disable everywhere"). Sure - you can disable it from the addons / extensions page.

[Ben]

@abtocool

mapx doesn't work for us; he's just an incredibly prolific, and awesome, contributor to this forum.

But I do. And you're completely right: we should have communicated this change better than we did. Thanks for the feedback -- we're working as hard as we can to improve.

[greiner]

I expect the ABP team to be more communicative in the future, fix all these issues (to file each of them, I have no time) in reasonable time, and not go cohoots with the advertisers forsaking common people for mere worldly gain

I totally agree! That's why we need the community to help us find a balance that works for everyone on the Web and not just for some. But also to provide constructive criticism about what we do, like in this discussion, so thanks for the interesting comment you posted last week. I forwarded your feedback to some more people in our team.

Generally, we're always finding ourselves in situations where communication is key and - similar to Mozilla - sometimes we succeed and sometimes we don't. Especially direct communication with users is tricky for us because we're barely collecting any data about them thanks to our strict privacy policy, we can't address them directly because we don't know their email addresses and we're very careful when notifying users about certain things through the extension since that can be quite annoying.
That's a challenge we're constantly trying to deal with so any ideas on how we can more directly reach out to users could be helpful in that regard.

[messycheesecake]

I've now seen several reports of notably poor performance caused by Adblock Plus (ABP) and resolved by replacing it with uBlock Origin. (uBlock is more performant than ABP, but this represents a significant regression.)

Can anyone else confirm this? If so, please leave a comment. I'd like to gather a bit more evidence before escalating.

If you've noticed poor performance recently and have ABP, please test disabling it (or replacing with uBlock) to see if this resolves the issue - and let me know .

Thanks!

[mapx]

I've now seen several reports of notably poor performance caused by Adblock Plus (ABP)
Can anyone else confirm this? If so, please leave a comment. I'd like to gather a bit more evidence before escalating.

see https://issues.adblockplus.org/ticket/6067

[mapx]

beta version 1937 fixed the "block element" issue (now you can click "block element", select an element on page, in the opened window you'll see the filter)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... sions/beta

[jerriy]

Excuse me but I can't see where in this 3.0 layout the import and export option is located

I have an INI file and don't know how to get it into ABP. In the old version it said something like "backup"

[mapx]

There is no backup feature for now.
You could copy your custom filters (from ini file), go into options (settings), advanced, my filter list => paste the copied filters.

I guess the devs will add some backup feature in the next releases. @greiner knows more on this ..

[greiner]

I guess the devs will add some backup feature in the next releases. @greiner knows more on this ..

The backups still exist so you could, at least in theory, retrieve it directly from the extension storage. There's no UI for it yet though and the logic for the creation of backups might also be missing but we have it on our list of features that we got asked to bring back. I can't give you any estimation when this is expected to land but for the rest of this year the focus will be on cleaning up the code and fixing issues.

[VulcanTourist]

Also, where is this functionality in the version for Firefox Mobile? It's nonexistent. All that exists is the ability to subscribe to additional filters. I spent hours last night trying to find some workable alternative that would let me erase the Promoted Tweets from Twitter Mobile, and found nothing. I'm exploring my options to convert my original custom rules into my own filter list that I can host and subscribe to as a URL in the Mobile version. Of course migrating ongoing changes might become an enormous pain unless file formats are identical.

As @mapx pointed out the list of filterable items is still available via the development tools (F12 then "Adblock Plus", F5 to refresh the list).

This is not at all the same functionality: this only functions at the level of Web requests, whereas Element Hiding Helper operated on DOM elements. Not only is this substantially less useful because of the loss of scope, it still doesn't interactively highlight what it intends to block on the page... oh right, because it can't because the DOM and actual page elements are invisible to this impostor. I still have privoxy installed... pretty quickly this will drive me to relearn what I once knew about creating filters with that. Of course there is nothing WYSIWYG about that, but at least it can operate on the same DOM scope as Element Hiding Helper.