µBlock 0.7.0.2

More translation work imported from Crowdin.

Closed as fixed:

• safelinking.net is broken
• "Enable experimental features" breaks twitch.tv
• Element picker appears misaligned on http://xkcd.com/
  • Thanks to s-fiebig for pointing out the solution

Notes:

Reminder: use experimental features at your own risk. If you feel pages do not display/behave properly, first thing is to disable experimental features and see if this help.

µBlock 0.7.0.1

Closed as fixed:

• espn.com video clips won't play
  • Caused by an important change in an extension API which was marked as "stable" since Chromium 17.
  • Unless they have their own workaround, Adblock Plus, AdBlock and whatever other blocker will have the same problem: don't blame them, blame Chromium dev team for messing up a stable API.

µBlock 0.7.0.0

New:

• Dynamic filtering
  • Dynamic-filtering: examples
• Backup/restore/reset user settings. Available in About tab in the dashboard.

Closed as fixed:

• Clickable labels for checkboxes
• Local mirroring causes "Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier" in cached JS
• uBlock makes break layout of MoPub website
• The "Block Element" isn't shown on all context menus
• Feature request: "Reset to defaults" button
• Element picker seems to inherit some style rules (not RTL languages friendly)
• Element Picker not working
• Settings save/restore feature

µBlock 0.6.6.0

Experimental features

Since I started to work on HTTP Switchboard, then µBlock, this has been my stern observation: tracking/data mining and all such activities are just plain out of control. This can't be argued. See latest privacy exposure benchmark to get an idea.

Most people are aware of the visible part of this iceberg, the ads. In my opinion, users should care even more about the less visible part, the tracking/data mining to which they are subjected.

I made it my current hobby to try to give users the tools to escape that which they did not consent and explicitly opt-in in a fully informed manner.

So in that spirit, when I think of a feature which may be beneficial in foiling tracking/data mining, I will first introduce it as an experimental feature. "Experimental features" are disabled by default, and can be enabled in the Settings tab in the dashboard.

New:

• Experimental feature: "Local mirroring" (ideas for better name welcomed):
  • To reduce privacy exposure to 3rd-parties
  • Even with EasyList, EasyPrivacy et al., users are potential target for tracking/data mining through ubiquitous Content Delivery Networks.
  • This feature is an attempt to minimize this exposure.

Changes:

• "Fanboy's Social Block List" will now be selected by default when µBlock is installed by default (no change for existing users, but you are encouraged to selected it).

In the spirit of this release, I strongly encourage users to enable "Anti-ThirdpartySocial‎" (formerly named "Fanboy’s Anti-Facebook"): 3rd-party connections to facebook.com are not foiled by "Fanboy's Social Block List", and I observed in the latest benchmark that connections facebook.com have grown significantly (see for yourself, spreadsheets available here.)

µBlock 0.6.5.0

New:

• A new setting in the Settings tab in the dashboard: "Make use of context menu where appropriate".
  • Disabled by default.
  • When enabled: there will be an entry in the context menu to block a specific element on a page.
• When the "Block element" entry in the context menu is clicked:
  • This will launch the element picker, with the element under the mouse pointer selected by default.
  • All elements which match the candidate filter in the text area will be highlighted.
    • This way you can see the future effect of the filter on the current page.
    • Be mindful that other pages on the same site may be affected by the filter you create.
  • There is an issue when the element under the mouse is an iframe: this needs to be investigated.
    • Works fine when using the element picker itself to select the element though.

Closed as fixed:

• Element Picker - elements don't appear due to z-index
• As requested from many places: a "block element" entry in context menu

µBlock 0.6.4.0

Important:

I can't guarantee µBlock will work flawlessly on a non-stable version of any Chromium or Chromium-based browser. Currently it appears there are issues with running µBlock on Chromium 39 (or derivatives). See issue 247, #254, #255. The following has been helpful to some experiencing problems (which are really on Chromium side):

• Enable "Predict network actions to improve page load performance"; and/or
• Disable "Use hardware acceleration when available".

New:

• New language: Estonian by OlavMägi
• New network filter option: inline-script, to prevent inline javascript from executing.
  • Possibly useful to workaround anti-blockers
  • Will not prevent execution of javascript loaded from external resources (unless those resource are specifically blocked using other filters)
  • Example: ||example.com^$inline-script = do not execute inline javascript tags
• Custom lists will be given a user-friendly list name when one is available
• Added default custom lists -- apply only to new installations. There are commented out by default.

Changed:

• I changed the element picker icon to this one.

Closed as fixed:

• Element picker sometimes fails at creating a net request filter
• Improperly supported: example.com$third-party,domain=~example.ca
• Portuguese language not fully translated in uBlock 6.3.2
• New filter option: inline-script, to block inline-script

Partially fixed:

• Support incrementally adding/removing filters [performance]
  • Now when creating a filter using the element picker, the filter lists won't be completely flushed and reloaded.

µBlock 0.6.3.3

• Video auto-plays when uBlock is enabled
  • The bug is really in Chromium 38/39, but I felt I needed to create a workaround because:
    • It appears many users are using the non-stable version of Chromium (or derivatives).
    • Not sure the bug is being addressed by the Chromium devs, thus I rather have a workaround now if ever it is not resolved before the next release.

µBlock 0.6.3.2

Closed as fixed:

• Negated request type broken

µBlock 0.6.3.1

Closed as fixed:

• cracked.com videos don't play
• When applying 2 of the same filter list, the "%s out of %s" is behaving strangely

Informal changes (see commits):

• Performance work.

µBlock 0.6.3.0

Notes:

This week, after long procrastination, I finally upgraded to Linux Mint 17, which means I could finally use Chromium 37 instead of being stuck with Chromium 34.

Through benchmarking memory, I found out that Chromium 37 appears to cause web pages to consume more memory. Since extensions are actually (long-lived) web pages, this increase in memory usage is also probably affecting all extensions as well.

So I will be keeping a record of benchmark results over time in order to be able to tell whether external factors contribute to changes in µBlock's memory usage:

• Own memory usage: benchmarks over time
• Contributed memory usage: benchmarks over time

Closed as fixed:

• Net filtering: not worth to use bits of domain name in category hash [performance]
• Element Hider can't select anything on Wolfram Alpha
• flickr does not load the page view