Too many changes to list here, essentially there is now a
user interface setting to enable/disable dark theme, and
I've rearranged a bit the Settings pane as a result and
also altered other visuals in various places.
There are places which I know have not been thoroughly
tested (i.e. logger inspector).
Will fine-tune as per feedback.
Issues with the classic popup panel will not be addressed,
and if feedback is that it has become unusuable, it will be
outright removed.
Related discussion:
- a0a9497b4a (commitcomment-62560291)
The new setting, when disabled (enabled by default), allows a user
to prevent uBO from waiting for all filter lists to be loaded
before allowing network activity at launch. The setting is enabled
by default, meaning uBO waits for all filter lists to be loaded in
memory before unsuspending network activity. Some users may find
this behavior undesirable, hence the new setting.
This gives the option to potentially speed up page load at launch,
at the cost of potentially not properly filtering network requests
as per filter lists/rules.
For platforms not supporting the suspension of network activity,
the setting will merely prevent whatever mechanism exists on the
platform to mitigate improper filtering of network requests at
launch. For example, in Chromium-based browsers, unchecking the
new setting will prevent the browser from re-loading tabs for
which there was network activity while in "suspended" state at
launch.
As was done with generic pattern-based filters, the source
string of regex-based filters is now stored into the
bidi-trie (pattern) buffer.
Additionally, added a new "dev tools" page to more
conveniently peer into uBO's internals at run time, without
having to do so from the browser's dev console -- something
which has become more difficult with the use of JS modules.
The new page can be launched from the Support pane through
the "More" button in the troubleshooting section.
The benchmark button in the About pane has been moved to this
new "dev tools" page.
The new "dev tools" page is for development purpose only,
do not open issues about it.
Add ability to bring back logger button in popup panel through
the advanced setting `uiPopupConfig`. Adding `+logger` token
to `uiPopupConfig` will bring back the logger icon in the mobile
version of the popup panel.
Additionally, the link to the logger in the Support pane will
take into account whether the <Shift> key is pressed, so as
to behave like the logger icon in the popup panel.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1847
The troubleshooting information has been further fine-tuned to
report popup panel data related to the reported page, for better
diagnosis by disclosing any customization to uBO which was
affecting the reported page.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1541
A "chat" icon has been added to the popup panel to make
it easy to report filter issue on specific sites.
Reporting filter issues require a GitHub account, since
uBO does not have a home server through which reports could
be sent.
The report icon is available only for when uBO is enabled
on a given site.
On mobile devices, the logger icon is replaced by the "chat"
icon since it is more likely to be useful on small display
devices. The logger can always be opened from the Support
pane in the dashboard.
Related commit:
- a3a43c7cb4
Specifically:
- Support i18n
- Autofill issues opened through Support pane with configuration
information
- Remove from About pane items found in Support pane
For now the language locales are not available as the text on
the page needs to stabilize before asking translation
volunteers to contribute their time working on the new text.
The code exported to nodejs package was revised to use modern
JavaScript syntax. A few issues were fixed at the same time.
The exported classes are:
- DynamicHostRuleFiltering
- DynamicURLRuleFiltering
- DynamicSwitchRuleFiltering
These related to the content the of "My rules" pane in the
uBlock Origin extension.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1664
The various filtering engine benchmarking functions are best
isolated in their own file since they have specific
dependencies that should not be suffered by the filtering
engines.
Additionally, moved decomposeHostname() into uri-utils.js
as it's a hostname-related function required by many
filtering engine cores -- this allows to further reduce
or outright remove dependency on `µb`.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1664
The changes are enough to fulfill the related issue.
A new platform has been added in order to allow for building
a NodeJS package. From the root of the project:
./tools/make-nodejs
This will create new uBlock0.nodejs directory in the
./dist/build directory, which is a valid NodeJS package.
From the root of the package, you can try:
node test
This will instantiate a static network filtering engine,
populated by easylist and easyprivacy, which can be used
to match network requests by filling the appropriate
filtering context object.
The test.js file contains code which is typical example
of usage of the package.
Limitations: the NodeJS package can't execute the WASM
versions of the code since the WASM module requires the
use of fetch(), which is not available in NodeJS.
This is a first pass at modularizing the codebase, and
while at it a number of opportunistic small rewrites
have also been made.
This commit requires the minimum supported version for
Chromium and Firefox be raised to 61 and 60 respectively.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/3212
The element picker will now properly work on sites where
cosmetic filtering is disabled, but will not allow the
creation of cosmetic filters when specific cosmetic filters
are not meant to be enforced in the current page.
When specific cosmetic filters are not meant to be enforced,
the element picker will still allow the creation of network
filters, that is unless the current page is trusted, in which
case using the element picker is pointless.
The syntax to remove response header is a special case
of HTML filtering, whereas the response headers are
targeted, rather than the response body:
example.com##^responseheader(header-name)
Where `header-name` is the name of the header to
remove, and must always be lowercase.
The removal of response headers can only be applied to
document resources, i.e. main- or sub-frames.
Only a limited set of headers can be targeted for
removal:
location
refresh
report-to
set-cookie
This limitation is to ensure that uBO never lowers the
security profile of web pages, i.e. we wouldn't want to
remove `content-security-policy`.
Given that the header removal occurs at onHeaderReceived
time, this new ability works for all browsers.
The motivation for this new filtering ability is instance
of website using a `refresh` header to redirect a visitor
to an undesirable destination after a few seconds.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1513
Prior to this commit, the ability to enable/disable the
uncloaking of canonical names was only available to advanced
users. This commit make it so that the setting can be
toggled from the _Settings_ pane.
The setting is enabled by default. The documentation should
be clear that the setting should not be disabled unless it
actually solves serious network issues, for example:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1694404
Also, as a result, the advanced setting `cnameUncloak` is no
longer available from within the advanced settings editor.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1501
Exception filters for `document` option are complying with
uBO's own semantic for `document` option, i.e. an exception
filter for `document` option will only allow to bypass a
block filter for `document` (either explicit or implicit)
and nothing else.
Exception filters using `document` option are *not*
compatible with ABP's interpretation of these filters.
Whereas in ABP the purpose of a `document` exception filter
is to wholly disable content blocking, in uBO the same
filter will just cause strict-blocking to be disabled while
leaving content blocking intact.
Additionally, the logger was fixed to properly report pages
which are being strict-blocked.
The procedural cosmetic filtering code has been split from
the content script code injected unconditionally and will
from now on be injected only when it is needed, i.e. when
there are procedural cosmetic filters to enforce.
The motivation for this is:
https://www.debugbear.com/blog/2020-chrome-extension-performance-report#what-can-extension-developers-do-to-keep-their-extensions-fast
Though uBO's content script injected unconditionally in all
pages/frames is relatively small, I still wanted to further
reduce the amount of content script code injected
unconditionally: The procedural cosmetic filtering code
represents roughly 14KB of code the browser won't have to
parse/execute unconditionally unless there exists procedural
cosmetic filters to enforce for a page or frame.
At the time the above article was published, the total
size of unconditional content scripts injected by uBO was
~101 KB, while after this commit, the total size will be
~57 KB (keeping in mind uBO does not minify and does not
remove comments from its JavaScript code).
Additionally, some refactoring on how user stylesheets are
injected so as to ensure that `:style`-based procedural
filters which are essentially declarative are injected
earlier along with plain, non-procedural cosmetic filters.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/210
Additionally, a small (experimental) widget has been added
to emphasize/de-emphasize rows which have 3rd-party
scripts/frames, so as to more easily identify which rows
are "affected" by 3rd-party scripts and/or frames.
Tooltip localization for the new widget is not available
yet as I want wait for the feature to be fully settled.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1480
Forward compatiblity was broken due to `externalLists`
being converted into an Array from a string, i.e.
downgrading to uBO 1.32.4 was completely breaking uBO.
This commit restores `externalLists` as a string which
is what older versions of uBO expect.
A new property `importedLists` has been created to
hold the imported lists as an array, while
`externalLists` will be kept around for a while until
it is completely removed in some future.
The managed `userSettings` entry is an array of entries,
where each entry is a name/value pair encoded into an array
of strings.
The first item in the entry array is the name of a setting,
and the second item is the stringified value for the
setting.
This is a more convenient way for administrators to set
specific user settings. The settings set through
`userSettings` policy will always be set at uBO launch
time.
Content scripts can't properly look up effective context
for sandboxed frames. This commit add ability to extract
effective context from already existing store of frames
used for each tab.
The entry `toOverwrite.filterLists` is an array of
string, where each string is a token identifying a
stock filter list, or a URL for an external filter
list.
This new entry is to make it easier for an
administrator to centrally configure uBO with a
custom set of filter lists.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1744
A new context menu entry, "Block element in frame...", will
be present when right-clicking on a frame element. When
this entry is clicked, uBO's element picker will be
launched from within the embedded frame and function the
same way as when launched from within the page.
The auto-complete feature in the _"My filters"_ pane will
use hostname/domain from the set of opened tabs to assist
in entering values for `domain=` option. This also works
for the implict `domain=` option ṗrepending static extended
filters.
Notably, make `queryprune` option available only
to filter list authors, until there are guards
against bad filters in some future and until the
option syntax and behavior is fully settled.
Instances of `queryprune` in filter lists will be
compiled, however instances of `queryprune` in
_"My filters"_ will be ignored unless users
indicated they are a filter list author.
Reported internally by @gwarser.
In rare occasion, a timing issue could cause uBO to redirect
to a web accessible resource meant to be used for another
network request. This is a regression introduced with the
following commit:
- 2e5d32e967
Additionally, I identified another issue which would cause
cached redirection to fail when a cache entry with redirection
to a web accessible resource was being reused, an issue which
could especially affect pages which are generated dynamically
(i.e. without full page reload).
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/760
The purpose of this new network filter option is to remove
query parameters form the URL of network requests.
The name `queryprune` has been picked over `querystrip`
since the purpose of the option is to remove some
parameters from the URL rather than all parameters.
`queryprune` is a modifier option (like `csp`) in that it
does not cause a network request to be blocked but rather
modified before being emitted.
`queryprune` must be assigned a value, which value will
determine which parameters from a query string will be
removed. The syntax for the value is that of regular
expression *except* for the following rules:
- do not wrap the regex directive between `/`
- do not use regex special values `^` and `$`
- do not use literal comma character in the value,
though you can use hex-encoded version, `\x2c`
- to match the start of a query parameter, prepend `|`
- to match the end of a query parameter, append `|`
`queryprune` regex-like values will be tested against each
key-value parameter pair as `[key]=[value]` string. This
way you can prune according to either the key, the value,
or both.
This commit introduces the concept of modifier filter
options, which as of now are:
- `csp=`
- `queryprune=`
They both work in similar way when used with `important`
option or when used in exception filters. Modifier
options can apply to any network requests, hence the
logger reports the type of the network requests, and no
longer use the modifier as the type, i.e. `csp` filters
are no longer reported as requests of type `csp`.
Though modifier options can apply to any network requests,
for the time being the `csp=` modifier option still apply
only to top or embedded (frame) documents, just as before.
In some future we may want to apply `csp=` directives to
network requests of type script, to control the behavior
of service workers for example.
A new built-in filter expression has been added to the
logger: "modified", which allow to see all the network
requests which were modified before being emitted. The
translation work for this new option will be available
in a future commit.
Additionally, add a button in the About pane
to launch benchmark sessions. The button will
be available only when advanced setting
`benchmarkDatasetURL` is set and pointing to
a valid dataset.
Related issues:
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1390
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2334
The deadline to interactively load a specific media
element has been extended from 2sec to 5sec.
Clicking over a blocked large media element will cause
uBO to lookup and handle all potentially blocked large
elements at the cursor position. This should take care
of being able to unblock media elements hidden under
other DOM object.
The CSS style applied to blocked large media elements
has been fine tuned to improve interactivity.
uBO will now remember the specific media elements which
were unblocked and keep them exempted from being
further blocked. This would be an issue when unblocking
a video and then a bit later seeking to another point
in the video, in which case uBO would again block
network requests for that video.
Additionally, as a requirement to support click-to-load
feature, redirected resources will from now on no
longer be collapsed.
Related issues:
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/2688
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/3619
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/1899
This new feature should considered in its draft
stage and it needs to be fine-tuned as per
feedback.
Important: Only embedded frames can be converted
into click-to-load widgets, as only these can be
properly shieded from access by page content.
Examples of usage:
||youtube.com/embed/$3p,frame,redirect=clicktoload
||scribd.com/embeds/$3p,frame,redirect=clicktoload
||player.vimeo.com/video/$3p,frame,redirect=clicktoload
Related feedback:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/401#issuecomment-703075797
Name: `uiTheme`
Default: `unset`
Values:
- `unset`: uBO will pick the theme according to
browser's `prefers-color-scheme`
- `light`: force light scheme
- `dark`: force dark theme
This advanced setting is not to be documented yet as
it has not been decided this is a long term solution.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/763
Changes:
From now on, uBO will allow click-to-subscribe on only
a few select domains, currently:
- https://filterlists.com/
- https://github.com/
- https://github.io/
More domains can be added if and only the demonstration
is made that more than a marginal number of filter lists
can be subscribed from those domains.
The browser alert box is no longer used to confirm
subscription to a filter list. Instead, the asset
viewer has been expanded to serve that purpose. This
way, users can peruse at the content of a filter list
before subscribing to it.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1226
Related commit:
- 9eb455ab5e
In the previous commit, the element picker dialog was
isolated from the page content. This commit is to also
isolate the svg layers from the page content.
With this commit, there is no longer a need for an anonymous
iframe and the isolated world iframe is now directly
embedded in the page.
As a result, pages are now unable to interfere with any
of the element picker user interface. Pages can now only
see an iframe, but are unable to see the content of that
iframe. The styles applied to the iframe are from a user
stylesheet, so as to ensure pages can't override the
iframe's style properties set by uBO.
Cloud storage is a limited resource, and thus it
makes sense to support data compression before
sending the data to cloud storage.
A new hidden setting allows to toggle on
cloud storage compression:
name: cloudStorageCompression
default: false
By default, this hidden setting is `false`, and a
user must set it to `true` to enable compression
of cloud storage items.
This hidden setting will eventually be toggled
to `true` by default, when there is good confidence
a majority of users are using a version of uBO
which can properly handle compressed cloud storage
items.
A cursory assessment shows that compressed items
are roughly 40-50% smaller in size.
Auto-completion will work only for uBO's own
tokens, compatibility-related tokens[1] will not be
taken into account for auto-completion.
The reason is to not have the compatibility-related
tokens get in the way of auto-completion in order
to not inconvenience uBO's filter list maintainers.
[1] `adguard_ext_chromium`, `adguard_ext_firefox`,
etc.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1134
Invalid values for `!#if ...` will be highlighted as errors.
Auto completion is now supported for both the directives
themselves and the valid values for `!#if ...`.
For examples, when pressing ctrl-space:
- `!#e` will auto-complete to `!#endif`
- `!#i` will offer to choose between `!#if ` or `!#include `
- `!#if fir` will auto-complete to `!#if env_firefox`
Additionally, support for some of AdGuard preparsing
directives, i.e. `!#if adguard` is now a valid and will be
honoured -- it always evaluate to `false` in uBO.
This commit adds CodeMirror's auto-completion capability
to the _My filters_ pane.
Currently, auto-completion is available for scriptlet
tokens: pressing ctrl-space while the text cursor is
positioned where a scriptlet token should appear will
cause auto-completion to kick-in. In case of ambiguity,
CodeMirror's widget to pick a specific scriptlet will
appear.
This commit moves some of the parsing logic of static
extended filtering into the static filtering parser; this
allows better syntax highlighting and creation-time
error-catching for cosmetic, HTML, and scriptlet filters.
There have been too many examples out there of users
opting-in to "I am an advanced user" and yet still misusing
dynamic filtering by creating _allow_ rules where _noop_
rules should be used.
Creating _allow_ rules has serious consequences as these
override blocking static filters and can potentially
disable other advanced filtering ability such as
HTML filtering and scriptlet injection -- often used
to deal with anti-blocker mechanisms.
The ability to point-and-click to create _allow_ rules
from the popup panel is no longer allowed by default.
An new advanced setting has been added to enable
the ability to create _allow_ rules from the popup
panel, `popupPanelGodMode`, which default to `false`.
Set to `true` to restore ability to set _allow_ rules
from popup panel.
Since the creation of _allow_ rules is especially useful
to filter list authors, to diagnose and narrow down site
breakage as a result of problematic blocking filter,
the creation of _allow_ rules will still be available
when the advanced setting `filterAuthorMode` is `true`.
This change is probably going to be problematic to all
those users who were misusing dynamic filtering by
creating _allow_ rules instead of _noop_ rules -- but
the breakage is going to bring their misusing to their
attention, a positive outcome.
Default to `unset`.
To allow users to bypass uBO's default CSS styles in
case they are causing issues to specific users. It is
the responsibility of the user to ensure the value of
`uiStyles` contains valid CSS property declarations.
uBO will assign the value to `document.body.style.cssText`.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/1044
For example, in the case of the issue above, one could
set `uiStyles` to `font-family: sans-serif` to force uBO
to the system font for its user interface.
The old "classic" popup panel will still be used
when at least one of the following is true:
- advanced setting `uiFlavor` is set to `classic`; or
- the browser is Chromium 65 or older; or
- the browser is Firefox 67 or older
The default configuration of the new popup panel
at installation time is to show the power button,
statistics and the basic tool icons, i.e. access
to dashboard, logger, pickers.
For existing installations, the new popup panel
will be configured by respecting the existing
configuration of the classic one.
The new popup panel is currently already in use
on Firefox for Android, and the visual redesign
was made according to suggestions and feedback
from <https://github.com/brampitoyo> to be
optimal for Firefox for Android.
The new popup panel will allow closing the following
pending issues:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/255
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/178
This commit specifically address bringing the
desktop version of the new popup panel's look
and feel more inline with the classic one:
- Hide tool captions on desktop
- Bring back no-popups switch on desktop
- Bring back tooltips on desktop (though they
are now rendered natively by the browser)
- Use the Photon icons suggested by @brampitoyo
for the no-popups and no-remote-fonts
switches
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/974
Related feedback:
- https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/fuscia/
The race condition was that a content script could
query the main process to retrieve cosmetic filters
while the cosmetic filters had not been yet fully
loaded into memory. The fix ensure that an already
injected content script will re-query once the
cosmetic filters are fully loaded in memory at
browser launch time.
This concerns the static network filtering engine.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/943
* * *
New static network filter type: `cname`
By default, network requests which are result of
resolving a canonical name are subject to filtering.
This filtering can be bypassed by creating exception
filters using the `cname` option. For example:
@@*$cname
The filter above tells the network filtering engine
to except network requests which fulfill all the
following conditions:
- network request is blocked
- network request is that of an unaliased hostname
Filter list authors are discouraged from using
exception filters of `cname` type, unless there no
other practical solution such that maintenance
burden become the greater issue. Of course, such
exception filters should be as narrow as possible,
i.e. apply to specific domain, etc.
* * *
New static network filter option: `denyallow`
The purpose of `denyallow` is bring
default-deny/allow-exceptionally ability into static
network filtering arsenal. Example of usage:
*$3p,script, \
denyallow=x.com|y.com \
domain=a.com|b.com
The above filter tells the network filtering engine that
when the context is `a.com` or `b.com`, block all
3rd-party scripts except those from `x.com` and `y.com`.
Essentially, the new `denyallow` option makes it easier
to implement default-deny/allow-exceptionally in static
filter lists, whereas before this had to be done with
unwieldy regular expressions[1], or through the mix of
broadly blocking filters along with exception filters[2].
[1] https://hg.adblockplus.org/ruadlist/rev/f362910bc9a0
[2] Typically filters which pattern are of the
form `|http*://`
The toolip of a canonical name entry (blue)
in the popup panel will provide the alias
hostname related to the canonical hostname
in order to help with rule-making decisions.
This is related to the list of domains/subdomains in
the dynamic filtering pane of the popup panel.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/284
Clicking on the empty space of a row will toggle
the visibility of the subdomains.
Additionally, the root context will always be visible
regardless of the expand/collspase state, along with
a visual indicator that a specific domain or subdomain
is the actual root context. (the root context is the
hostname in which local rules are created).
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/756
As per various feedbacks:
Added an advanced setting to keep the original behavior,
which can be potentially costly CPU-wise on some sites:
popupCosmeticFilterBadgeSlow
Default to `false`. Set to `true` to restore original
method of surveying the number of elements hidden as
a result of applying cosmetic filtering.
As suggested by <https://github.com/gwarser>, skip
descendant of nodes which have been found to be a
match in order to potentially increase the number
of nodes which can be surveyed in the alloted time.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/756
When trying the number of hidden elements as a result of
cosmetic filtering for popup panel badge purpose, the
code will bail out if this takes too long, and in such
case the badge will be set to `?`, meaning the number
of hidden elements is undetermined.
Related issue:
- https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/756
The badge value for the no-cosmetic-filtering
switch will be evaluated on-demand only, when
the user hover over the switch with the mouse
cursor.
For touch screen displays, a tap on the switch
will cause the badge to be rendered if not
already done, otherwise this will toggle the
switch as usual.
