Adblock Plus for Safari Beta released · 2014-01-21 15:56 by Sebastian Noack

I spent the past months porting Adblock Plus to Safari. And by now, we’ve got something that is stable enough to release as a beta. Adblock Plus for Safari uses mostly the same codebase as Adblock Plus for Chrome/Opera. So it has the same features and every improvement we do in the future for either browser extension will automatically land in the extension for the other browsers.

Disabling the Adobe Flash plugin can be useful if you want to increase stability of your browser, decrease resources and energy usage, and/or increase security. To disable Flash in Chrome UPDATE. Allow sites to run Flash.

To achieve this I implemented an abstraction layer with a backend for Chrome/Opera and a backend for Safari. This way most of the code is browser-agnostic and only the abstraction layer needs to know the APIs provided by the respective browser. That was actually quite a challenge, since Safari has a very limited API.

Adblock Plus for Safari is compatible with following versions of Safari:

• Safari 5 (works, but will break functionality on some websites due to a WebKit bug, usually affects image magnifiers)
• Safari 6
• Safari 7 (works, but has still some issues, see below)

If your Safari version is 11.0 or later, follow the steps For OS X 10.11, macOS 10.12 and later. If your Safari version is 10.0 or later, follow the steps For OS X 10.10. If your Safari version is earlier than 10.0, follow the steps mentioned in For OS X 10.8 and 10.9, or For OS X 10.6 and 10.7.

However it is still a beta, so here is what doesn’t work, yet:

• Popups aren’t blocked.
• The number of ads blocked for the current page will sometimes not be reset when navigating to a new page (Safari 7 only).
• Icon popup contents will sometimes not update when loading a page into a new tab (Safari 7 only).

Beside that Safari’s extension API is more limited than those of other browsers and therefore:

• Requests initiated by third-party plugins like Flash can’t be blocked. This mostly affects in-video ads (like prerolls), however not those on YouTube, which are blocked in a different way.
• XMLHttpRequests can’t be blocked.

If you find other issues please report them on the forum (registration is not necessary) or consider contributing.

Comment [10]

1. Kenny · 2014-01-25 18:52 · #

   Awesome! Thanks for the hard work you guys have been doing. Quick question, will this beta version update in the background with safari?

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Yes, it will update automatically.

2. James · 2014-01-26 12:05 · #

   Thanks for working on this guys.

   Unfortunately youtube ads aren’t blocked. There don’t even appear to be less of them. Such a shame as that is the entire reason I’m so keen on getting ABP for Safari :(

   Hopefully this can be fixed or I may have to concede and switch to a different browser.

   Reply from Sebastian Noack:

   YouTube video ads should be blocked for the first video. However, when you click on another video, in the sidebar or within the flash player, we can’t block ads for that video.

   If what you have experienced is even less efficient than that, please report a bug on the forum. Please include the steps to reproduce and the version of Safari you are using, into the bug report.

   However, until Apple provides better extension APIs, blocking ads within Flash will always be less efficient on Safari than with other browsers, like Chrome and Firefox.

   Update: Good news! I finally found a way to block ads in subsequent videos on YouTube. Those ads will be blocked starting with Adblock Plus for Safari 1.7.3.1112. However, you might still see ads in flash videos on other websites.

3. James · 2014-01-27 12:39 · #

   Thanks for the reply. I click on the sidebar or recommended videos a lot so that probably is the case.

   Forgive my lack of knowledge in this area, but I have heard of plugins or extensions that force youtube to use html and not the flash player. If blocking ads in flash is the problem in safari, would it work if youtube played on an html5 player instead?

   Just a thought… I’m probably wrong.

   Reply from Sebastian Noack:

   Yes, you shouldn’t see any ads with the HTML5 player. But unfortunately not all videos on YouTube are available for the HTML5 player, yet.

4. James · 2014-01-27 13:00 · #

   Oh that’s pretty cool though! It’s a temporary workaround at least. I’ve found an extension that let’s me use html5 for most videos. Haven’t encountered one that doesn’t work yet, but I might do.

   Hopefully the html5 support on youtube will only get better with time.

5. Sam · 2014-02-03 21:37 · #

   Have you thought about asking the people at webkit.org about improving the APIs? Obviously, a lot probably gets changed between nightlies and full releases of Safari, and it’s entirely possible that Apple will simply never allow Safari to block Flash ads effectively, but I think it’s worth looking into.

   (And please forgive me if this really doesn’t seem possible – I am in no way a programmer, so I don’t really know. ;) )

   Reply from Wladimir Palant:

   Part of the problem is that these APIs aren’t part of WebKit, they are Safari-specific and as such not open source.

6. Sam · 2014-02-07 03:34 · #

   Ah, I was afraid of that. Thanks for the reply though!

   I wish I didn’t like Safari so much, but for me, no other browser comes close to the aesthetics and simplicity. Oh well. Thanks for doing what you can.

7. durgesh · 2014-02-18 13:10 · #

   i want say thank u verry much

8. Techartisan · 2014-02-19 20:02 · #

   Will ABP function well on Safari 5.1.7 running on Win 8?

   Reply from Sebastian Noack:

   Adblock Plus works with Safari 5.1 for Windows. But the way requests are blocked on Safari, breaks functionality on some websites due to a WebKit bug, which was fixed in Safari 6.

   Also I strongly recommend not to use an outdated web browser like Safari 5.1, which isn’t supported anymore by Apple, and suffers from bugs, incompatibility with modern websites, and security issues. You might want to use Firefox or Google Chrome instead, which are great web browsers for Windows.

9. Judith Loftus · 2014-02-26 22:18 · #

   Just tried install beta, but did not work. Is this because I’m using an iPad?

10. Marko · 2014-02-27 11:49 · #

    @Judith:

    Yes, this is because you’re using an iPad. AdBlock Plus for Safari is for OS X (the operating system of MacBooks and Mac Pro), not iOS (the operating system of iPads and iPhones).

Commenting is closed for this article.

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TWG Flash Uploader News

TFU 3.2.2 is online.
TFU is now php 7 compatible! The background of the flash can now be made transparent and a new watermark plugin is available.
Please look below for all the new features and fixes.

The TWG Flash Uploader is a very comfortable way for your users to upload file to the remote server. Because it's based on flash it can be used by almost everyone. You can simply upload files by selecting files on your hard drive and simply press the upload button. Just select the different demos in the menu to see how it works!

You can manage your files as well. You can e.g. create, rename and delete folders and files, browse directories, edit files and much more.

Features

• php 7 compatible since version 3.2.2
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• Included login mechanism - makes it possible to define a different upload directory for every user. Simple user management already included
• File name client side filtering - define allowed and not allowed file extensions
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• TFU does detect multiple extensions (e.g. .php.gif) and does now remove the .php part because this can be a security problem when your server supports multiple extensions.
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• ...

* See FAQ - test the freeware version with https before register!

Additional features of the registered version

• No 3 MB upload popup.
• Download of files
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• Hide file extensions on the server view.
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  • Completely anonymous flash: The ? can be turned off
  • New 2.10: Reading of html form fields at file uploads.
  • New 2.11: Big progress bar. Go here for additional upload progress bars.
  • New 3.0: Colors of the 'Add files' and 'Upload' button can be set.

History

TFU and JFU do still work 100% with Flash 10!

New 3.2.2:

• New: php 7 compatible (php)

New 3.2.1:

• New: escapeshellcmd is used in execute_command for the flash uploader part as well to increase security. (php)
• New: Version 5.2.22 of php mail is used to fix the security errors there! (php)
• New: $mail->SMTPSecure support (php)

New 3.2:

• New: Background of the flash can now be made transparent to integrate it better into your page. See c_bg_transpartent in the updated howto 9: http://www.tinywebgallery.com/en/tfu/tfu_faq_9.php
• New: New plugin: watermark. You can now add a watermark directly after the upload. Thanks to Kulwinder Jootle to allow me to make this custom plugin public.
• Fix: The Javascript callback previewSelect was called twice

New 3.1:

• New: The status line can be formated with html. You can use html tags in the xml language files to format them. See the updated howto about changing colors
• New: Turkish and Taiwanese language file added. Thanks to the translators.
• Fix: The label of the server grid was not shown. Now it is shown again.

New 3.0.3:

• Fix: The new security settings where too tight for uploads in the description mode. Now this is treated properly.

New 3.0.2:

Please update to this version if you already use TFU 3.0.1

• Fix: In 3.0.1 I made the security restrictions too tight and for multiple file upload with bigger files only the first 1 or 2 where working.

New 3.0.1:

Please update to this version if you use php >= 5.4.x

• Fix: Added a debug message if the class COM is not available. This is needed for image magick on windows. You have to add extension=php_com_dotnet.dll to your php.ini to make it available again.
• Fix: 'imagejpeg(): Filename cannot be empty' error message with php 5.4 was fixed!
• Fix: removeExtension was renamed to tfu_removeExtension because in Joomla another extension used the same function name.
• Fix: parseParameter does now allow @ as well. This enables to have e-mails in the login. I also allow *!+%.
  

New 3.0:

Allow Flash In Safari

All planned features for version 3 are now implemented. Have fun with version 3 of TFU.

How Do I Allow Flash On Safari

• New: Add files and the Upload button can now be styled individualy! You can set color, background color, font weight and theme for both! See the updated howto 9.
• New: multiple recipient e-mail at uploads are now supported with smtp as well. Separate e-mails by ,
• New: Security improvments regarding session fixation.
• New: Howto 22 how to change the session name
• New: Session override when session_cache does exist. If the global session does contain values but the internal session handling is active (sesssion_cache folder does exist) the global data was nor used. Now the gobal settings does overwrite tfu settings.
• New: Parameter $use_size_as_height. If you set this to true horizontal and vertical images are all resized to the given size. So vertical images are wider than the given size!
• New: Improved support for MAC file uploads. An additional / at the end of the upload string fixes an i/o error on some Mac configurations.
• Fix: Improved normalisation. Now many more inputs are normalized properly.
• Fix: Directories with special chars like öäü where not displayed in the title bar.
• Fix: Elements where overlapping when selecting multiple menu items
• Fix: When a file was selected, and a preview is not available the button was invisible but still enabled.
• Fix: A blank preview was loaded by the invisible button
• Fix: $remove_multiple_php_extension was always removing .php extensions when enabled. Now is only removed them when the file has another extension afterwards.
• Fix: Right border was not displayed in IE sometimes. An extra pixel in the include code fixed this.
• Fix: Improved error message when the file upload flash cannot be loaded.

Requirements

Allow Flash In Safari Ipad

Browser: Flash 8 or 9 plugin (< 9.0.28 for full screen images)
Web Server: php > 4.x . GD lib > 2.0 if you want to use the resize and preview feature!

This article is translated to Serbo-Croatian language by Jovana Milutinovich from Webhostinggeeks.com.