19 ms·

People are using µBlock now for precisely this reason. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared https://github.com/gorhi

by shpx 12y ago

People are using µBlock now for precisely this reason. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/%C2%B5block/cjpalh... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

ddorian43 12y ago
it probably needs a better way to whitelist sites/pages
- gorhill 12y ago
  I frankly don't know how to improve on clicking the big fat green button in the popup to whitelist a site (Ctrl-click for a specific page).
  - ddorian43 12y ago
    sorry, i never hovered on it. thanks
  - pjlegato 12y ago
    It's not at all obvious what that button does. The icon is typically associated with "power on/off." While I can see how this is supposed to suggest whitelisting in an abstract and metaphoric sense, making that connection is a bit of a stretch, particularly for casual users. I suggest removing the icon and just putting a plain old checkbox with a label that says "Whitelist Site".
    - _asummers 12y ago
      If you hover over it, it tells you exactly what it does.
      - lomnakkus 12y ago
        "hover over it to find out what it does" does not constitute good UX unless you're talking about a toolbar with a multitude of icons which cannot all (by sheer numbers) be "intuitive".
        _asummers 12y ago
        I'm not claiming it's the best UX, and I have no particular affinity to this program, but it's really not hard to tell what it does, especially for the demographic here.
        lomnakkus 12y ago
        Nor do I have any particular affiliation or affinity. It just sounds like poor UX/UI. I guess the whole "hover over it if you're confused" thing is pretty established by now, so I'd say your original assessment is probably the correct one. I just want us (the industry) to get better at this stuff! :)
        _asummers 12y ago
        Fair enough; that's totally reasonable, and I agree with you. I guess I just had an objection to the post I originally replied to which (seemingly) had the attitude of it being impossible to tell what the button did. The UX could certainly be better, but it's not bad.
        Zuider 12y ago
        Yes, but it is not intuitively obvious for the ordinary user who would account for the majority of page views and potential advertising revenue.
    - pjlegato 12y ago
      Addendum: The apparent scope of the icon is browser-wide, not limited to the current page. Since the "power on/off" icon is unqualified, it seems like clicking it will turn the entire plugin on and off, not merely whitelist the current site.
elvis635 12y ago
Together with umatrix (https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/ https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/) are the best chrome extensions Since I went back to firefox those are the only extensions I really miss, there is policeman (https://github.com/futpib/policeman/ https://github.com/futpib/policeman/) but it's not as good as them yet To whoever develop extensions, please don't focus only on chrome, firefox during the last months has become must better that it was before, if developers only consider chrome, people will eventually migrate to it and firefox will die. Even though chromium is open it won't be good for the ecosystem
- gcommer 12y ago
  I use NoScript and RequestPolicy for full white listing functionality in Firefox.
- Nexxxeh 12y ago
  As my paranoia ramps up year on year, I now use Opera with µBlock. For me, it has the polish of Chrome with some nice extras, but without the increasingly creepy Googality. It works fine, although I've not tried µMatrix. (I have my defaults changed to DuckDuckGo. Usually connecting via a VPN.) I've whitelisted a few sites I like to support (a couple of webcomics, HaD etc). I have a lot of filters: "62,501 network filters ＋ 40,728 cosmetic filters". Opera's task manager says the extension is taking up a mere 32MB. Probably not accurate, but a lot better AdBlock (my previous favourite). Off-topic but I wish people would stop using Mu for project names. Where is the Mu key on the keyboard? I have to copy and paste or alt-code it. Call the project microBlock or something! They use "u" instead of "µ" on Github, so why not just use something else entirely? µTorrent was the one that really irritated me because I couldn't type "utorr" to search for it on my start menu. I'd say something to gorhill (albeit far more politely), but it seems childish and ungrateful. He's clearly poured so much time and effort into making such useful software. "Great software but the name is fucking annoying, mate!"
  - gorhill 12y ago
    I myself most often write "uBlock" and pronounce "you-block", as in "users decide". I originally used the mu character in place of the u to emphasize smaller resource footprint relative to similar solutions out there. I've never been good with picking name etc., unfortunately now we are stuck with it.
aluhut 12y ago
Too bad its's not for Firefox
- Squarex 12y ago
  Someone is working on it there https://github.com/Deathamns/uBlock https://github.com/Deathamns/uBlock. There is also experimental xpi https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/27 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/27.
  - aluhut 12y ago
    Fantastic! Thank you :)
- pwr22 12y ago
  I use Bluhell Firewall, it isn't as good as ABP but it is definitely better than nothing and so light
kyriakos 12y ago
I tried µBlock but it seems to be extremely trigger happy. For example Youtube front page doesn't show any videos and Facebook doesn't load at all (basically it blocks everything other than its side bar). I can obviously white list those sites but my concern is that next time I visit some site for the first time I will not know if its broken or just µBlock acting up. ----- EDIT I reinstalled the plugin and the problems went away. So far looks good.
- gorhill 12y ago
  > Youtube front page doesn't show any videos I see videos all fine on Youtube front-page, using out-of-the-box filter lists. That kind of issue was never reported for uBlock. I would need to know exactly what filter lists you were using, including custom filters. uBlock relies on 3rd-party filter lists to do the job, specifically, out of the box: - EasyList - EasyPrivacy - Fanboy's Social Blocking List - Peter Lowe's Ad Servers - Malware domains So if you think it blocks too much, un-select the filter lists you do not want. Bottom line, whatever filter lists you use in uBlock, you will get the same results with the same lists with ABP.
  - vosper 12y ago
    I haven't tried ublock yet, is it obvious how to work back from a broken page to figure out which blacklists need adjusting? I'd also recommend that the defaults should have YouTube and Facebook (at least) working out of the box. Otherwise I think people will just uninstall the plugin, rather than trying to figure out how to fix it, which would be a shame.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - mijoharas 12y ago
      Having just tried uBlock, the defaults do allow both Youtube and Facebook to work out of the box (and exactly the same as with adblock, as far as I can tell). I think the poster must've had some other problem. (or maybe some of the filter lists changed in between his problem and my trying it, which is equally possible) EDIT: ( Chrome 39.0.2171.95 (64-bit), linux )
reledi 12y ago
Thanks, haven't heard of uBlock until now. Giving it a try.
logn 12y ago
In some tests, uBlock results in the browser using less memory than with no plugins: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benchmarking-memory-footprint-of-the-early-preview https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benc... n.b. Firefox results from experimental patch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8802509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8802509
- tim333 12y ago
  That was my experience. My usage for four pages was about 80M with uBlock, 120M with AdBlock Pro and 200M with nothing. Pages also took like 1s to load with the blockers and 12s without because of all the ad junk loading. (with Chrome)
gorhill 12y ago
One thing I would like to point out, is that there is a bug currently in Chromium 39 which causes a new memory leak each time the popup UI of an extension is opened: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500 This affects all extensions. Just so people are informed memory figures won't be too reliable as soon as you opened even only once the popup UI of an extension. (In all my benchmarks I of course avoided to do this).
- curiously 12y ago
  does this happen only when you click the ublock and it opens a popup window or with any extension popup UI?
  - gorhill 12y ago
    Any extension popup UI, which appears when you click an extension icon. The more complicated the HTML document in the popup, the larger the leak.
    - curiously 12y ago
      what about extensions without a popup UI?
crishoj 12y ago
For those using Safari, there is a preliminary version of µBlock here: http://chrisly.me/0B0s2Y2Y3b0R http://chrisly.me/0B0s2Y2Y3b0R Note: No automatic updates with this unofficial build.
- Logmix 12y ago
  Impressive, it's already much much faster than AdBlock.
codexon 12y ago
I find ublock breaks many more websites than ABP. I usually wouldn't notice a broken website with ABP, but with ublock I see something wrong at least once a week.
- chii 12y ago
  iirc, ublock also blocks api.google.com (i guess it's the analytics javascript files?), which incidentally, also breaks a lot of sites that uses the google common javascript library CDN (which servers stuff like jquery etc). I whitelisted it and it seems to unbreak some stuff.
  - gorhill 12y ago
    > ublock also blocks api.google.com There is no filter which matches "api.google.com", so this can't be blocked, unless you have a custom filter which does that. > also breaks a lot of sites that uses the google common javascript library CDN uBlock uses third-party filter lists such as EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's, etc. It won't block more than what is spelled out in these lists. Un-select whatever filter lists which you think should not be selected. As I have said countless times now, uBlock will block as much as ABP blocks when using same filter lists. As always, if you think something is blocked which should not be (for example if ABP with the same lists has a different behavior), I need a URL, a test case in order to be able to infirm/confirm that the problem is with uBlock and not with the filter lists. On that ground, uBlock has been quite stable for a while now, I don't remember the last time something was blocked which should not have been blocked (or vice versa) as per filter lists.
nXqd 12y ago
thanks for pointing out :)
hoers 12y ago
Thank you so much for these!
edwinyzh 12y ago
Thanks for the recommendation! Long time ago I've uninstalled AdBlock due to the noticeable performance issue and have been suffering the ads on the news websites, will now try uBlock.
kokonotu 12y ago
Thanks! This is my first time to hear about µBlock. I have uninstalled ABP to use µBlock to see if there are any difference.
webwanderings 12y ago
I desperately need ublock for mobile.

by shpx 12y ago

ddorian43 12y ago

it probably needs a better way to whitelist sites/pages

gorhill 12y ago
I frankly don't know how to improve on clicking the big fat green button in the popup to whitelist a site (Ctrl-click for a specific page).
- ddorian43 12y ago
  sorry, i never hovered on it. thanks
- pjlegato 12y ago
  It's not at all obvious what that button does. The icon is typically associated with "power on/off." While I can see how this is supposed to suggest whitelisting in an abstract and metaphoric sense, making that connection is a bit of a stretch, particularly for casual users. I suggest removing the icon and just putting a plain old checkbox with a label that says "Whitelist Site".
  - _asummers 12y ago
    If you hover over it, it tells you exactly what it does.
    - lomnakkus 12y ago
      "hover over it to find out what it does" does not constitute good UX unless you're talking about a toolbar with a multitude of icons which cannot all (by sheer numbers) be "intuitive".
      - _asummers 12y ago
        I'm not claiming it's the best UX, and I have no particular affinity to this program, but it's really not hard to tell what it does, especially for the demographic here.
        lomnakkus 12y ago
        Nor do I have any particular affiliation or affinity. It just sounds like poor UX/UI. I guess the whole "hover over it if you're confused" thing is pretty established by now, so I'd say your original assessment is probably the correct one. I just want us (the industry) to get better at this stuff! :)
        _asummers 12y ago
        Fair enough; that's totally reasonable, and I agree with you. I guess I just had an objection to the post I originally replied to which (seemingly) had the attitude of it being impossible to tell what the button did. The UX could certainly be better, but it's not bad.
        Zuider 12y ago
        Yes, but it is not intuitively obvious for the ordinary user who would account for the majority of page views and potential advertising revenue.
  - pjlegato 12y ago
    Addendum: The apparent scope of the icon is browser-wide, not limited to the current page. Since the "power on/off" icon is unqualified, it seems like clicking it will turn the entire plugin on and off, not merely whitelist the current site.

elvis635 12y ago

Together with umatrix (https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/ https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix/) are the best chrome extensions Since I went back to firefox those are the only extensions I really miss, there is policeman (https://github.com/futpib/policeman/ https://github.com/futpib/policeman/) but it's not as good as them yet To whoever develop extensions, please don't focus only on chrome, firefox during the last months has become must better that it was before, if developers only consider chrome, people will eventually migrate to it and firefox will die. Even though chromium is open it won't be good for the ecosystem

gcommer 12y ago
I use NoScript and RequestPolicy for full white listing functionality in Firefox.
Nexxxeh 12y ago
As my paranoia ramps up year on year, I now use Opera with µBlock. For me, it has the polish of Chrome with some nice extras, but without the increasingly creepy Googality. It works fine, although I've not tried µMatrix. (I have my defaults changed to DuckDuckGo. Usually connecting via a VPN.) I've whitelisted a few sites I like to support (a couple of webcomics, HaD etc). I have a lot of filters: "62,501 network filters ＋ 40,728 cosmetic filters". Opera's task manager says the extension is taking up a mere 32MB. Probably not accurate, but a lot better AdBlock (my previous favourite). Off-topic but I wish people would stop using Mu for project names. Where is the Mu key on the keyboard? I have to copy and paste or alt-code it. Call the project microBlock or something! They use "u" instead of "µ" on Github, so why not just use something else entirely? µTorrent was the one that really irritated me because I couldn't type "utorr" to search for it on my start menu. I'd say something to gorhill (albeit far more politely), but it seems childish and ungrateful. He's clearly poured so much time and effort into making such useful software. "Great software but the name is fucking annoying, mate!"
- gorhill 12y ago
  I myself most often write "uBlock" and pronounce "you-block", as in "users decide". I originally used the mu character in place of the u to emphasize smaller resource footprint relative to similar solutions out there. I've never been good with picking name etc., unfortunately now we are stuck with it.

aluhut 12y ago

Too bad its's not for Firefox

Squarex 12y ago
Someone is working on it there https://github.com/Deathamns/uBlock https://github.com/Deathamns/uBlock. There is also experimental xpi https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/27 https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/27.
- aluhut 12y ago
  Fantastic! Thank you :)
pwr22 12y ago
I use Bluhell Firewall, it isn't as good as ABP but it is definitely better than nothing and so light

kyriakos 12y ago

I tried µBlock but it seems to be extremely trigger happy. For example Youtube front page doesn't show any videos and Facebook doesn't load at all (basically it blocks everything other than its side bar). I can obviously white list those sites but my concern is that next time I visit some site for the first time I will not know if its broken or just µBlock acting up. ----- EDIT I reinstalled the plugin and the problems went away. So far looks good.

gorhill 12y ago
> Youtube front page doesn't show any videos I see videos all fine on Youtube front-page, using out-of-the-box filter lists. That kind of issue was never reported for uBlock. I would need to know exactly what filter lists you were using, including custom filters. uBlock relies on 3rd-party filter lists to do the job, specifically, out of the box: - EasyList - EasyPrivacy - Fanboy's Social Blocking List - Peter Lowe's Ad Servers - Malware domains So if you think it blocks too much, un-select the filter lists you do not want. Bottom line, whatever filter lists you use in uBlock, you will get the same results with the same lists with ABP.
- vosper 12y ago
  I haven't tried ublock yet, is it obvious how to work back from a broken page to figure out which blacklists need adjusting? I'd also recommend that the defaults should have YouTube and Facebook (at least) working out of the box. Otherwise I think people will just uninstall the plugin, rather than trying to figure out how to fix it, which would be a shame.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - mijoharas 12y ago
    Having just tried uBlock, the defaults do allow both Youtube and Facebook to work out of the box (and exactly the same as with adblock, as far as I can tell). I think the poster must've had some other problem. (or maybe some of the filter lists changed in between his problem and my trying it, which is equally possible) EDIT: ( Chrome 39.0.2171.95 (64-bit), linux )

reledi 12y ago

Thanks, haven't heard of uBlock until now. Giving it a try.

logn 12y ago

In some tests, uBlock results in the browser using less memory than with no plugins: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benchmarking-memory-footprint-of-the-early-preview https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Firefox-version:-benc... n.b. Firefox results from experimental patch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8802509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8802509

tim333 12y ago
That was my experience. My usage for four pages was about 80M with uBlock, 120M with AdBlock Pro and 200M with nothing. Pages also took like 1s to load with the blockers and 12s without because of all the ad junk loading. (with Chrome)

gorhill 12y ago

One thing I would like to point out, is that there is a bug currently in Chromium 39 which causes a new memory leak each time the popup UI of an extension is opened: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=441500 This affects all extensions. Just so people are informed memory figures won't be too reliable as soon as you opened even only once the popup UI of an extension. (In all my benchmarks I of course avoided to do this).

curiously 12y ago
does this happen only when you click the ublock and it opens a popup window or with any extension popup UI?
- gorhill 12y ago
  Any extension popup UI, which appears when you click an extension icon. The more complicated the HTML document in the popup, the larger the leak.
  - curiously 12y ago
    what about extensions without a popup UI?

crishoj 12y ago

For those using Safari, there is a preliminary version of µBlock here: http://chrisly.me/0B0s2Y2Y3b0R http://chrisly.me/0B0s2Y2Y3b0R Note: No automatic updates with this unofficial build.

Logmix 12y ago
Impressive, it's already much much faster than AdBlock.

codexon 12y ago

I find ublock breaks many more websites than ABP. I usually wouldn't notice a broken website with ABP, but with ublock I see something wrong at least once a week.

chii 12y ago
iirc, ublock also blocks api.google.com (i guess it's the analytics javascript files?), which incidentally, also breaks a lot of sites that uses the google common javascript library CDN (which servers stuff like jquery etc). I whitelisted it and it seems to unbreak some stuff.
- gorhill 12y ago
  > ublock also blocks api.google.com There is no filter which matches "api.google.com", so this can't be blocked, unless you have a custom filter which does that. > also breaks a lot of sites that uses the google common javascript library CDN uBlock uses third-party filter lists such as EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's, etc. It won't block more than what is spelled out in these lists. Un-select whatever filter lists which you think should not be selected. As I have said countless times now, uBlock will block as much as ABP blocks when using same filter lists. As always, if you think something is blocked which should not be (for example if ABP with the same lists has a different behavior), I need a URL, a test case in order to be able to infirm/confirm that the problem is with uBlock and not with the filter lists. On that ground, uBlock has been quite stable for a while now, I don't remember the last time something was blocked which should not have been blocked (or vice versa) as per filter lists.

nXqd 12y ago

thanks for pointing out :)

hoers 12y ago

Thank you so much for these!

edwinyzh 12y ago

Thanks for the recommendation! Long time ago I've uninstalled AdBlock due to the noticeable performance issue and have been suffering the ads on the news websites, will now try uBlock.

kokonotu 12y ago

Thanks! This is my first time to hear about µBlock. I have uninstalled ABP to use µBlock to see if there are any difference.

webwanderings 12y ago

I desperately need ublock for mobile.