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Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

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Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#41

Post by PhasmaFelis »

addicted wrote: post #11

I really prefer Ghostery. Gives a much better analysis of what's being blocked, with fine grain controls, and much nicer UI. I haven't measured the memory consumption, but I havent had any noticeable issues so far.

My one huge problem with Ghostery is that it doesn't appear to provide any way to pinpoint the source of an ad. I only want to block intrusive ad providers, but the only way to go from "see an annoying ad" to "block its provider" in Ghostery is to play trial-and-error with potentially dozens of different trackers, blocking and reloading one at a time until the offending ad goes away. In ABP, you could do this with a couple of clicks.

Am I missing something?

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#42

Post by kzrdude »

dnlrn wrote: post #32
ssalazar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched back to ABP when uBlock started universally blocking Sourceforge. I understand Sourceforge has engaged in a number of very shady practices lately, but I need Numpy for my job and I don't have time to work around nanny software.

uBlock didn't start to universally block sourceforge, they just added sourceforge to their "uBlock filters - badware risks" list, which is justified imo. If you don't want this behaviour, just disable the list.

I'm always happy with the reminder that I happened to follow a link to sourceforge. I don't need anything there..

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#43

Post by nnethercote »

karlshea wrote: post #38
elinchrome wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cem Kaner said that all the pedantry about whether or not something is a bug is irrelevant. He says a bug is anything a user perceives as wrong. I used to worry about calling things not-really-bugs, but when I adopted his viewpoint it gave me a better perspective on what's important in software.

Just like Mozilla's pedantry about what's a "memory leak" that let me to ditch Firefox for Chrome years ago.

Firefox's memory usage is much better than it used to be, thanks to the MemShrink project (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink). Judging from sites like Hacker News, more people have trouble with memory usage on Chrome than on Firefox these days, and the same is true of performance in general.

YMMV, but it might be worth trying Firefox again.

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#44

Post by gorhill »

ethana wrote: post #18
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Great for everyone still using Adblock Plus. The rest of us switched to uBlock Origin and never looked back.

What people doesn't know is that uBlock makes use of EasyList as one of its default block lists. EasyList is maintained by ABP's parent company. That list itself has built-in whitelist that could not be turn off without revamping the list itself. That list contains upward of 60k of rules and no one has time to evaluate that for free. uBlock can make all kind of independence claims it wants, but at the end of the day,…

> EasyList is maintained by ABP's parent company

EasyList/EasyPrivacy are community-driven filter lists.[1] Whatever whitelisting in EasyList/EasyPrivacy is to address site breakage. Not addressing site breakage would lead to less people using these lists, and thus less people benefiting from the protection they offer (see graph at link below).

The "acceptable ads" fitlers are in a separate list, which is not part of uBlock Origin.[2]

Here are the benefits of using EasyList/EasyPrivacy (the "Easy mode" bar): https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode#. If you know filter lists which can accomplish the same protection with the same reliability at not breaking sites, I will be happy to use them in uBlock. Filter lists which lead to site breakage won't be used by a majority of users because the majority of users just want an install and forget approach. So the net result would be less people protected, the complete opposite of the goal I set for uBlock.

> uBlock can make all kind of independence claims it wants, but at the end of the day, uBlock is still relying on ABP for its blocking rules

No, uBlock Origin depends on community-driven EasyList/EasyPrivacy, just like many other blockers: ABP, AdBlock, AdGuard, BluHell, Adblock Fast, etc.

[1] https://forums.lanik.us/

[2] "Acceptable ads" list: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.tx...

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#45

Post by gorhill »

ljk wrote: post #14

Does anyone know if it's worth switching back from uBlock for?

I updated the benchmarks (I published first back in March) for Firefox 41 and Chromium 45. Results: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benc...

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#46

Post by webwanderings »

nnethercote wrote: post #40
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Great for everyone still using Adblock Plus. The rest of us switched to uBlock Origin and never looked back.

[Here's a comment that I made on this topic on my blog back when this was discussed in July, which is still relevant. The numbers have probably changed a bit, but I doubt enough to affect my point. (The link is https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2015/07/01/firefox-41-w... ).] I’ve seen variations on this comment many times in discussions of this post. It’s totally wrong-headed. Here are the usage stats for these ad…

Thanks for the data. As another uBlock user (who does not care about the split by the way) and as someone who is not a tech-bubble elite, I can tell you with much confidence, that there is no such thing as "ordinary users" when it comes to Adblocking.

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#47

Post by nnethercote »

frandroid wrote: post #7

Someone needs to get in there and do better bug prioritization...

It's been known for 14 years that sharing this data might help some pages. But it was only last year that it became clear that it would provide big wins in a compelling use case (i.e. for AdBlock Plus users). See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=988266#c8

And then it took another 15 months to get fixed because it was a significant and complicated change.

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#48

Post by mintplant »

ssalazar wrote: post #25
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Great for everyone still using Adblock Plus. The rest of us switched to uBlock Origin and never looked back.

I switched back to ABP when uBlock started universally blocking Sourceforge. I understand Sourceforge has engaged in a number of very shady practices lately, but I need Numpy for my job and I don't have time to work around nanny software.

Couldn't you have turned off uBlock for that site via the toolbar button?

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#49

Post by artursapek »

padenot wrote: post #24
bitwarrior wrote: post #3

Not really a bug, more of an enhancement.

This is Mozilla jargon. Anything that is tracked in Bugzilla is a "bug". I've opened bug in Bugzilla to change the chair at my desk, for example (I work at Mozilla).

I like that. You have a simple system and you stick with it.

Re: Mozilla fixed a 14-year-old bug in Firefox, Adblock Plus uses less memory

#50

Post by euyyn »

nnethercote wrote: post #43
karlshea wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like Mozilla's pedantry about what's a "memory leak" that let me to ditch Firefox for Chrome years ago.

Firefox's memory usage is much better than it used to be, thanks to the MemShrink project ( https://wiki.mozilla.org/Performance/MemShrink ). Judging from sites like Hacker News, more people have trouble with memory usage on Chrome than on Firefox these days, and the same is true of performance in general. YMMV, but it might be worth trying Firefox again.

> more people have trouble with memory usage on Chrome than on Firefox these days

Maybe it's just that Chrome has more users.

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