0.5.0 release

[schomery]

General note: This is a major release. Almost all the blocker code is rewritten.

@narcolepticinsomniac I would appreciate if you can test this new implementation on a few websites and report back.

[narcolepticinsomniac]

For sure.

One big issue that seems to be resolved in the update is target="_blank" links. In Chromium at least, they've been flaky for a while. Sometimes whitelisted sites would still get blocked, and you'd need to reload the page. A lot of times if they were blocked, clicking it multiple times, one would slip through. If they were blocked, right clicking to open manually would sometimes also trigger it to open, or if you actually clicked the context-menu, two would open.

All of these issues seem better. I never bothered reporting because they were hard to repro consistently, and you seemed busy with other stuff.

In general, lately I have less go-to sites that are always terrible with popups, but I'll keep the new version installed and seek them out.

Found a couple little bugs so far, but I don't think they're anything new having to do with the update.

Screen records and URLs:

Videos.zip

[narcolepticinsomniac]

Btw, Idk what the deal is with https://www.google.com/favicon.ico, but you'll see in one of the vids that it's the "popup" one site is trying to open over and over. If you scroll down a few reviews on CWS, you'll see another user mention the same weird URL:

Luna DashModified Jul 11, 2018

DOES NOT block https://www.google.com/favicon.ico

Look elsewhere for something that does block this

[schomery]

I guess they use google.com to test if there is a popup blocker installed!

Please update to the latest dev version and let me know if you still get these popups.

[narcolepticinsomniac]

I guess they use google.com to test if there is a popup blocker installed!

Must be. Hadn't occurred to me at the time, but IIRC google.com is whitelisted by default, which is probably common in popup blockers, so maybe they exploit that to try to slip one by, or run some check. I don't really wanna blacklist google though, that sounds like a PITA.

The other example is fixed, thanks. So far, so good. All the changes I've seen have been positive.

[schomery]

do you still ge these "https://www.google.com/favicon.ico" popups?

[narcolepticinsomniac]

Yeah, it's because they're whitelisted by default since they open a google page. If you remove google from the whitelist, they're blocked. Blacklisting google would probably be annoying though, so maybe you could just backlist the URL if a lot of popup scripts are using that particular URL.

[schomery]

I cannot think of any way to block this without having google.com removed from the list.

[smed79]

@narcolepticinsomniac As custom filter, add to your adblock (ABP, AdB, uBo...) :

||google.com/favicon.ico$popup,third-party

[narcolepticinsomniac]

add to your adblock

Already did, but I appreciate it. I was suggesting he might wanna do something about them in PBS, because popup scripts seem to be exploiting google favicon URLs since they know they'll be whitelisted. If not, NBD, but users won't understand why these weird popups are getting through, they'll just think it's the blocker's fault.

[pizzadude]

@schomery when will 0.5.0.x be released on the AMO?

[schomery]

@pizzadude the new release works fine on FF as far as I can tell. I am still waiting for #80.

[schomery]

Looks like the 0.5.0.x release is stable. I just released the FF version too. Thanks all for the reports and contributions.

[narcolepticinsomniac]

Sent you an email.

[schomery]

@narcolepticinsomniac I just replied.