A tip for the AdBlock Plus users

[sqlrob]

This applies mainly to the Mac users, but it's probably applicable to Linux users as well with some changes.

Today I found out that Adblock Plus for Firefox was spamming Console (/Applications/Utilities/Console) with a pile of messages like
Adblock Plus: FakeController.QI to an unknown interface: {47b82b60-a36f-4167-8072-6f421151ed50}, which makes it really difficult to find any real messages.

The fix, fortunately, is easy. You need a text editor like Text Wrangler. From the command line, vim or emacs works just as well if you're familiar with them.

First, quit Firefox. In your home directory, open Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/<random bunch of letters and numbers>/extensions/{d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}/components/nsAdblockPlus.js

Alternatively, you may be able to do a spotlight search for nsAdblockPlus.js.

In this file search for lines containing (no quotes) "unknown interface". Those lines should begin with dump. Prefix the dump with //. Save the file, and you should be set.

Comments

[raising-caine.livejournal.com]

I couldn't use AdBlock Plus in W98SE. It was freaking my whole system out. I went back to the plain old AdBlock, which functions just fine.

[sqlrob.livejournal.com]

huh. I wonder what it was doing.

Of course, I'm also of the opinion if you use 98, you deserve what you get ;) Damn 16 bit hack made to look like 32 bit code.

[gutterboylive.livejournal.com]

Could this be related to both my Macs crapping the bed at once? They were both running Firefox with AdBlock Plus when they froze, and neither could be force-quit; they had to be unplugged to be restarted.

And could the problem be not AdBlock Plus, but Filterset.G? I had it set to automatically update the filter list; perhaps the bad code came in a filterset update.

[sqlrob.livejournal.com]

The code is definitely part of Adblock Plus, I reported it there and it was closed as "already fixed in development version"

It's not doing anything dangerous, it's just putting lots of stuff in your console.log.

I'm updating the filterlist as well, and I'm not seeing any problems. I am also running as a non-administrator, so I can't overwrite any system files by mistake.