Adblock Plus

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Not to be confused with AdBlock (Chrome).
Adblock Plus
Adblockplus icon.png
Developer(s) Current lead developer:
Wladimir Palant
Former lead developers:
Henrik Aasted Sørensen,
Michael McDonald
Initial release 2006
Stable release 2.2.4[1] / May 8, 2013; 1 day ago (2013-05-08)
Written in JavaScript, XUL, CSS
Operating system Cross-platform
Type Mozilla extension, Google Chrome Extension
License GPL
Website adblockplus.org/

Adblock Plus (ABP) is an open-source[2][3] content-filtering and ad blocking extension for Mozilla Firefox (including Firefox for mobile[4]), Google Chrome and Opera web browsers. In November 2012, Adblock Plus was also released as an app for Android devices. ABP, a forked version of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed.

Contents

Adblock Plus [edit]

How it works [edit]

Wikitravel with and without Adblock Plus

Like Mozilla's built-in image blocker, Adblock Plus blocks HTTP requests according to their source address and can block iframes, scripts, and Flash. It also uses automatically generated user stylesheets to hide elements such as text ads on a page as they load instead of blocking them, known as element hiding.[5]

History [edit]

Michael McDonald of Provo, Utah created Adblock Plus 0.5 that improved on the original Adblock by incorporating the following features:

  • Whitelisting
  • Support for blocking background images.
  • Subscription to filters with a fixed address and automatically update them.
  • The ability to hide HTML elements allowing a much greater range of images to be blocked.
  • The ability to hide ads on a per site basis instead of globally.
  • Memory leak fixes

McDonald discontinued development and transferred the name to Wladimir Palant, who released Adblock Plus 0.6 with a rewritten codebase in January 2006.[6] PC World chose Adblock Plus as one of the 100 best products of 2007.[7]

Adblock Plus for Google Chrome has been available since December 2010.[8] The code for Adblock Plus for Google Chrome is largely based on the now renamed "AdThwart". The former developer of AdThwart is a contributor to the project.

Adblock Plus for Android works as a local proxy that blocks ads in both browsers and apps on Android smartphones. Without root access it blocks ads only on wifi connection, on rooted phones it also blocks ads on 3G. On Android versions older than 3.0, users have to manually configure their proxy settings for Adblock Plus to work. However, Firefox for Android's add-on Adblock Plus blocks the same content as the desktop version of Firefox would and requires no root access.

Filters [edit]

Basic filter rules can include wildcards represented by asterisks (*). Sites and objects can be whitelisted with filters that start with two at signs (@@). Regular expressions delimited by slashes (/) can be used. Adblock Plus also supports a more-sophisticated syntax that gives fine-grain control over filters.[9] An example of the sophisticated filtering would be 'wikipedia.org#div(id=siteNotice)', which will hide the siteNotice element used by Wikipedia to display donation requests.

Filter subscriptions [edit]

Users can add external filtersets. Adblock Plus includes the ability to use one or more external filter subscriptions that are automatically updated. Filterset.G is incompatible with this system (and Adblock Plus specifically recommends against using Filterset.G for other reasons as well), but other filtersets can be added by typing their addresses. A list of known Adblock Plus subscriptions is maintained on the Adblock Plus official website.

EasyList [edit]

EasyList[10] is the most popular Adblock Plus filter list with over 12 million subscribers.[11] Created by Rick Petnel,[12] it became officially recommended by the Adblock Plus program, and filter lists for other languages were built on top of it. Petnel died in 2009[13][14] and he named a user going by the name "Ares2" as the new maintainer.[15]

Fanboy's lists [edit]

Fanboy's list[16] is the second most popular Adblock Plus filter list. Fanboy started the service in early 2009. The lists available are Adblock List (Main list), Tracking List, Enhanced Trackers List, Annoyance Block List, and Adult List. These are available as singletons or various combinations as one subscription—most notably Fanboy Ultimate Adblock List which combines every list. The lists are available for Firefox, Iron-Chrome, IE, Opera and Midori.

ABP features improvements to the user interface, filter subscriptions, and an element hiding extension. It has since become the most popular extension for Firefox, with around 12 million daily users.[17]

Although Adblock Plus does not support Internet Explorer, it is possible to export a filter list such as EasyList or Fanboy's List to an XML document which can then be imported into Internet Explorer's InPrivate content filtering. (However, a user must first install Adblock Plus and subscribe to EasyList to download it, as the website disallows direct downloading.)

[edit]

Main article: Ad filtering

A number of website operators, who use third party hosted online advertisements to fund the hosting of their websites, argue that the use of ad-blocking software such as Adblock Plus risks cutting off their revenue stream. While some websites have successfully implemented subscription and membership based systems for revenue, the majority of websites today rely on third party hosted online advertising to function.[18] The assumption that users can visit a website for "free", with third party advertisements to pay for the hosting, has led some operators to go as far as to call the use of adblockers tantamount to theft,[19] and others to take counter-measures to deter its use.

On December 5, 2011, Wladimir Palant announced that certain "acceptable" ads would be whitelisted in upcoming builds of the Adblock software, with the option to remove whitelisted ads via a custom setting in the software. According to Palant, only static advertisements with a maximum of one script will be permitted as "acceptable", with a preference towards text-only content. The announcement created some controversy both at Adblock's website and at social media sites like Reddit.[20]

In response to the "acceptable ads" whitelisting, more than one fork of Adblock Plus was created. Examples are Adblock Edge[21] and Adblock Lite.[22]

Detection [edit]

Some webmasters have used JavaScript to detect the effects of the popular Adblock filters.[23][24] This is done by generating a honeypot-like URL, verifying its delivery, and DOM verification after the web page is rendered by the web browser, to ensure the expected advertising elements are present. Detection is simplified since the extension is not yet capable of replacing content; Loopback proxies provide this additional functionality.

These methods do not detect the presence of the Adblock extension directly, only the effects of the filters. They are vulnerable to continued filter updates, and whitelist-filtering web scripts with extensions such as NoScript.

An attempt was made to detect the plug-in itself, but that detection method was rendered unusable by the 0.7.5.2 update of Adblock Plus.[25]

Google Chrome had a defect in Content Security Policy that allowed the detection of any installed extension, including Adblock Plus for Google Chrome.[26] The solution of this was possible only in Google Chrome 18, and requires each developer to make some changes in their extensions.[27] Adblock Plus for Google Chrome fixed this in version 1.3.[28]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Adblock Plus (2013-05-08). "Adblock Plus 2.2.4 for Firefox released". Adblock Plus. Retrieved 2013-05-09. 
  2. ^ Adblock Plus. "Adblock Plus : About". Adblock Plus. Retrieved 2012-06-20. 
  3. ^ Adblock Plus. "Adblock Plus : Source Code". Adblock Plus. Retrieved 2012-06-20. 
  4. ^ Mozilla. "Adblock Plus :: Add-ons for Mozilla". Mozilla. Retrieved 2011-07-10. 
  5. ^ "FAQ - Adblock Plus internals". Adblockplus.org. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  6. ^ "About Adblock Plus". Adblockplus.org. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  7. ^ "PC World - The 100 Best Products of 2007". PC World. Retrieved 2007-08-19. 
  8. ^ Verified author: adblockplus.org (2011-10-27). "Adblock Plus for Google Chrome™ (Beta) - Chrome Web Store". Chrome.google.com. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  9. ^ "Writing Adblock Plus filters". Adblockplus.org. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  10. ^ EasyList
  11. ^ "EasyList Statistics: August 2011". EasyList. 2011-09-01. Retrieved 2011-09-02. /
  12. ^ Whoriskey, Peter (2008-06-25). "One Man, One Long List, No More Web Ads". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-04-23. 
  13. ^ "Richard J. Petnel Obituary: View Richard Petnel's Obituary by Albany Times Union". Legacy.com. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  14. ^ "Adblock Plus and (a little) more: Sad news". Adblockplus.org. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  15. ^ "Adblock Plus and (a little) more: What is going on with EasyList". Adblockplus.org. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  16. ^ Fanboy's list
  17. ^ "Statistics for Adblock Plus". Mozilla. 2006-01-17. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  18. ^ https://wordswithmeaning.org/2012/04/an-open-letter-regarding-adblock-and-revenue-loss/
  19. ^ McDougall, Paul (2007-09-12). "Firefox AdBlock Foe Calls For Mozilla Boycott". Informationweek. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  20. ^ Palant, Wladimir (2011-12-05). "Allowing acceptable ads in Adblock Plus". Adblock Plus. Retrieved 2011-12-12. 
  21. ^ Adblock Edge at Mozilla Add-ons.
  22. ^ Adblock Lite at Mozilla Add-ons.
  23. ^ "(v. 1.0) - A JavaScript way of doing ad block detection". Adblock Detector. Retrieved 2013-02-11. 
  24. ^ "Content Filters and Proxy Detection". Retrieved 2013-02-11. 
  25. ^ "Detailed changelog for Adblock Plus 0.7.5.2". Adblockplus.org. Retrieved 2011-11-04. 
  26. ^ "Intro to Chrome addons hacking: fingerprinting". Retrieved 2013-02-11. 
  27. ^ "Google Chrome Extensions: Migrate to Manifest V2". Google. Retrieved 2013-02-11. 
  28. ^ "Adblock Plus 1.3 for Google Chrome™ released". Adblockplus.org. Retrieved 2013-02-11. 

External links [edit]

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adblock_Plus&oldid=554222268"