Official uBlock Origin add-on lands for Firefox
After some controversy and confusion in regards to uBlocks future, Raymond Hill's uBlock Origin extension is now officially available for the Firefox web browser.
The past weeks have been filled with uncertainty about uBlock's future. It all started when Raymond Hill, better known as Gorhill on GitHub, announced that he would hand over development to another member of the development team.
It was unclear at first what this meant and why Raymond made that decision but he shed some light on the issue later on when he noticed that more and more of his time was spend on support related tasks and there especially on a never ending stream of requests.
He did create a feature-complete version of uBlock and settled for the name uBlock Origin for it after his extension was taken down by Google on the Chrome Web Store for a brief period of time.
That was not the end of it though. Today, this post was published on GitHub looking back at the transfer of ownership.
The conclusion is what is most interesting though as Raymond states that he will continue uBlock Origin development.
Even better, uBlock Origin landed on Mozilla AMO where it can be downloaded by all users of the Firefox web browser (it was previously only available for Chrome).
The add-on has not been reviewed by Mozilla yet which means that it is only available to users who have the direct link to its add-on page.
Once it is reviewed by Mozilla, it will become available to all users on the site meaning that it can be found in categories and searches from that moment on.
Even though uBlock Origin is technically a fork of the original uBlock, it has the support of the original author of the extension which sets it part from uBlock.
Considering that features were removed from the original uBlock by the new owner of the project, it is without doubt the better choice going forward regardless of whether you are using Firefox or Google Chrome.
Please note that you can download the latest version of the Firefox add-on as well as the latest dev version of said add-on from GitHub as well.
Generally speaking, it is not suggested to run dev builds of the add-on unless you help with the development of the add-on, for instance by testing the newest versions and reporting bugs back to the project.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases
Well, looks like it worths the price… 3.15Mb (ouch)
I’ll give it a try.
To disable Add blocking in uBlock Origin on Ghacks site, just press uBlock icon on toolbar an then press that big blue thing (power on/off like), and that’s it…
…
>>Please note that you can download the latest version of the Firefox add-on as well as the latest dev version of said add-on from GitHub as well.
Will xpi downloaded from Github automatically update itself like mozilla addon version does?
Nope, nothing I do with uBlock Origin enabled will let gHacks display any ads. You’re doing yourself out of an income here.
I upgraded, but forgot to unblock gHacks! You could put a reminder in the article.
Also the UI is horrible. Can I go Tools > uBlock > Options for this site > Always disable? No, instead I’m lost in some horrid little animated mess that flutters about within the hamburger menu’s tiny area. This is awful, awful UI. I know that Firefox is partially to blame, but the dev of uBlock is the one who’s forsaken the Tools Menu. All my other extensions can be controlled from there (except Self Destructing Cookies, but their single button on/off thing is fine).
Ordinarily I’d mod the extension so that it does have a tools menu, but apparently that won’t work anymore. Mozilla are f*#@!$% *&$!#@!&*s
Should I keep using ABE or use uBlock Origin or move back to ABP?
@accdef: They have benchmarks saying you’re wrong. Of course the uBlock people ran the benchmarks.
Also there are a couple of features in Adblock Plus that are not available in others or superior to the others
For example:
The far superior blockable items
Still no update for chrome in app store (0.9.4.4 18.04.2015). Current version 0.9.5.0 (GitHub).
…
@pd: ublock (or ublock0) is a far superior technical solution. It uses a lot less memory and is faster. Adblock had its own drama too, remember. A whole different level actually.
No it is not superior adblocker
It might use a little less ram be it is definitely NOT faster
At least on Firefox
Not using other browsers
@Guest
As said above the ram difference is negligible for me
But the main point is that it is definitely NOT faster
And Adblock Plus has far superior features like “blockable items”
Firefox + Tab Data addon:
Adblock Edge = ~40MB average per tab
UBlock = ~10MB average per tab
Yeah no, I’m going with Ublock thanks (gorhill’s)
Also there are a couple of features in Adblock Plus that are not available in others or superior to the others
For example:
The far superior blockable items
what a huge mess. why not just stick with adblock plus?
“features were removed from the original uBlock by the new owner of the project”
Can we know which features have been removed? Is there a page showing a side-by-side features comparison?
Also wondering: Are either of these multiprocess (E10S aka “electrolysis”) compatible?
Would also like to know what you mean by that.
> Considering that features were removed from the original uBlock by the new owner of the project, it is without doubt the better choice going forward regardless of whether you are using Firefox or Google Chrome.
IIRC it was per-site policies.
New development here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/130#issuecomment-96321347
All seems good again.
The money grab bit is silly. He isn’t charging– and you _can_ charge for chrome addons. Putting up a donation link is contrary to gorhill’s beliefs, but he gave up control of development, so them’s the breaks.
I didn’t pick up on the no updates bit. I saw that he thought Chris didn’t do any real work, but figured others were. If that’s actually the case, obviously we go with gorhill’s fork.
This is really frustrating.
Gorhill abruptly abandoned his project, handing it off to someone else. Fair enough, he got fed up.
But now he forked his own project, and is telling people to use that fork, which he claims is complete, and isn’t interested in taking any change/enhancement requests. What the hell, man?
The original uBlock is still under active development, and while that guy did put up a donation link, it’s not like he’s actually charging for it. He seems like a perfectly nice guy from his public comments.
As a user, I just want to know which one to use– and I want it in the official mozilla addons site so it autoupdates and I don’t need to constantly check a github page. I know it’s open-source and free, and I am grateful all these guys worked for free and created something great. I don’t want to minimize that in any way. But at the end of the day, I just want a working, autoupdating addon sans drama.
> But now he forked his own project, and is telling people to use that fork, which he claims is complete, and isn’t interested in taking any change/enhancement requests. What the hell, man?
Maybe he just wants to be left alone? Now the masses can swarm onto the abandoned project and hammer the new owner with requests. Long-term users can make the switch to uBlock Origin, since it’s maintained by the original developer.
It’s a little confusing, but I’d rather this than have him stop working on it altogether.
Fucking drama…
I agree that Gorhill may have put too much faith in one of the other developers (Chris), but I very much disagree with him being a nice person.
Also the whole ‘made with love and care by Chris’ when other people have done most of the work, is a dick move.
I doubt he was in it for the money, but it definitely smells like unrestrained egomania, wanting to further his own e-cred.
https://i.imgur.com/GU4YxHH.png
Personally I would stick with Gorhills release, since he created the project, brought in some awesome features, i agree with the philosophy and I just can’t see Chris putting in the same effort.
You are mad over Donation? LOL, they are not forced in anyway, are you also angry at gHacks for asking for them too because they are dying.
You do realize there are costs that Chris has to deal with uBlock right? And the donation were also split among the contributors that work on uBlock, he’s not stealing anything for himself, he’s also 17 for Christ sake.
He did a video to try and explain this drama since people like to pick a single phrase like “stealing work/taking donations” and run with it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1TpddtVUA
Gorhill is just a giant man baby, and still continues to be one.
He’s upset that the new maintainer is making it “about the money” by collecting donations and handing them out to the people who are working on the project. It’s great that gorhill has a good paying job or is independently wealthy or something, but he shouldn’t get upset that once he abandoned the project the people who carried on the work thought it would be nice to get paid for it.
It seems that gorhill had this fantasy where he could just step away from the project and “the community” would take it over and keep it going in exactly the way he would have. The reality is that he announced he was abandoning the project with no notice and picked this guy to be the new maintainer, and the new guy made some entirely reasonable decisions for the project in that capacity, but because they are different from what gorhill would have done he’s getting all pissy about it. As the new maintainer of course he’s going to update the attribution statements, and it’s entirely normal and common projects to accept donations and pay them to contributors. If gorhill (or anyone) had a problem with any of this they probably should have discussed it with the new maintainer like adults rather than admittedly ignoring his emails and then trying to yank the project back after a few weeks.
Gorhill was not happy with the new ‘owner’.
quote:
I have exhausted all assumption of good faith I could give, this is currently what I see about the chrisaljoudi/uBlock repo:
uBlock is still the product of a whole lot of work by many different contributors
Removing authorship information
Misrepresentation: uBlock is “made […] by Chris”
To me it does appear most of the work by @chrisaljoudi since taking over has been to market uBlock.
@chrisaljoudi actively seeking donations to “make uBlock happens”[8]
On December 13th 2014, @chrisaljoudi wrote me, he was interested to “send over […] < $1,000 to support the work on the Safari version"[9]
Bluntly said, my opinion from what I have observed, and in hindsight, I now believe @chrisaljoudi's primary motivation is to cash in on uBlock.
end quote
So he basically did the 'up yours' and started another fork putting back the code that was removed etc.
He also firmly believes that NO UPDATES will be forthcoming for the other ublock port. As he said, it's nothing more than a money grab.
Oh computerword, sigh! Another disingenuous article, combining desktop + Mobile as one. No mention of Android Firefox downloaded million times in the Playstore. Wasn’t waste after all, Adblock Plus detected a few trackers, ads.
http://betanews.com/2015/04/09/android-users-download-mozilla-firefox-100-million-times-and-counting-from-google-play/
TL;DR Gorhill wants his ball back and Chris wants to make some money for his time.
At least the second part is incorrect: See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1TpddtVUA. TLDR: “Safari requires own hosting for initial installation,” unlike FF and Chrome. Needless to say, hosting costs.
Also, Martin, since you have gorhill’s story linked in the article, you might want to consider linking Chris’ views too. The whole issue isn’t as Good Guy vs Bad Guy as gorhill’s complaints make it seem.
Can you please post it, I don’t have it.
Thanks for keeping us up to date, Martin.
Is it possible to keep blocking a certain domain even when a site is whitelisted (extension turned off for, say, google.com) ?
if you’re using windows, search for “host file domain blocking” on google
Not with AdBlockPlus or Easylist filters and I tried. You have to manually uncheck whitelist elements every time filters update. It is extremely annoying ,for example, with Hulu whose ads can be blocked (leaving just timers to next segment and black screen). I prefer empty screen and timers to ads. Apparently Easylist moderators do not.
“You have to manually uncheck whitelist elements every time filters update.”
How about: copy the content from any lists you’ve subscribed to, copy into a new custom file (and sort / remove duplicate rules) and UNsubscribe from those lists. Do you REALLY need to have them updated? How much value (little or none) is provided via updated entries? That aboids the hassle of finding things overwritten upon each update, eh
Wilders Security Forums – uBlock -> http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ublock-a-lean-and-fast-blocker.365273/
This news immediately got running in my mind James Brown’s famous,
“I feel good I knew that I would now I feel good, I knew that I would now”
Really nice to have it available on AMO. When I see pluralism I always feel good. The debate between uBlock and uBlock Origin is bound to be interesting. uBlock origin here, and not for sentimental reasons. I acknowledge of course Raymond Hill as the author of uBlock but if uBlock Origin appeared to me in loss of quality compared its split branch uBlock, I wouldn’t hesitate to follow whatever new leader of the band. For once both are one, IMO : uBlock Origin.
Firefox is an endangered species with now less than 10% market share and shrinking rapidly.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2893514/an-incredibly-shrinking-firefox-faces-endangered-species-status.html
Thank god we’ve got you to spam articles with nothing relevant to the content except tangential market share speculation.
Is being an annoyance one of your life goals?
They have worked very hard to make it happen.
I’m using a lot of scripts, styles and add-ons but a huge number of them are there to fix what the mozilla team has broken. And that doesn’t include all the about:config changes. They still have not implemented such a basic thing as small icons for australis.
Right now Opera is my second browser and as soon as they implement a bookmarks sidebar I’m saying goodbye to firefox.
you can use a bookmarks sidebar in opera now, enable the experimental extensions sidebar in opera:flags and install the bookmarks by the side extension: https://addons.opera.com/en/extensions/details/bookmarks-by-the-side/
This guy said it all. FIrefox is great if you spend 8 hours fixing it before hand. And to do that you have to know a lot about Firefox already.
“… have been filed with uncertainty…” Did you mean “filled”? LOL :)
“He did create a feature-complete version if uBlock ” should be “He did create a feature-complete version of uBlock ” also the link for unblock.origin firefox is incorrect.
The link at the end of the article is working for me. Which link are you referring to?