AdBlock

Intro

AdBlock is a popular ad blocking extension for Chrome, Edge and Firefox, now based on the Adblock Plus code.

Requirements

This repository has the same requirements as the Adblock Plus.

Be sure that your build environment is up to date with the latest ABP dependencies (noted above).

Usage

Building

Requirements

• Node.js (>= 12.17.0)

Building on Windows

On Windows, you need a Linux environment running on WSL. Then install the above requirements and run the commands below from within Bash.

Updating the dependencies

In order to build the extension, you need to run the

npm run submodules:update

script. This build won't include the snippets library.

In order to create a build which includes the snippets library, you should run the

npm run submodules:update-with-snippets

script instead. This will work only if you have access to the abp-snippets repository.

Note: when building from a source archive, the above step must be skipped.

Run the following command to install all of the required packages

npm install

The above script will install the required npm packages for AdBlock, Adblock Plus, and run any pre & post install processing scripts.

Rerun the above commands when the dependencies might have changed, e.g. after checking out a new revison.

Building the extension

Run the following command in the project directory:

npx gulp build -t {chrome|firefox} [-c development]

This will create a build with a name in the form adblockpluschrome-n.n.n.zip or adblockplusfirefox-n.n.n.xpi. These builds are unsigned. They can be submitted as-is to the extension stores, or if unpacked loaded in development mode for testing (same as devenv builds below).

Development environment

To simplify the process of testing your changes you can create an unpacked development environment. For that run one of the following command:

npx gulp devenv -t {chrome|firefox}

This will create a devenv.* directory in the project directory. You can load the directory as an unpacked extension under chrome://extensions in Chromium-based browsers, and under about:debugging in Firefox. After making changes to the source code re-run the command to update the development environment, and the extension should reload automatically after a few seconds.

Other Build options

Two other build options are provided to aid in testing of the extension.

--ext-version - specifiying this parameter at build time will override the version specified in the build/config/base.mjs file. Most information about the format of the version in the manifest.json file can be found here.

--ext-id - specifiying this parameter at build time will override the Firefox / Mozilla extension id specified in the build/manifest.json file. More information about the format and when to provide the Extension / Add-on ID can be found here.

Code Style

We use a standard code style enforced by eslint for JavaScript and Prettier for HTML, CSS and JSON. We use HTMLhint for HTML accessibility and standards checking. To use these tools, install Node.js and run the following command in the project directory:

npm install

Specifically, the standard JavaScript code style we've adopted is the Airbnb JavaScript style guide

The following npm commands are then available:

• npm run lint runs eslint and prints out all JavaScript violations.
• npm run lint-fix runs eslint and automatically fixes JavaScript style violations in place (be sure to commit before running this command in case you need to revert the changes eslint makes).
• npm run prettier runs prettier on HTML, CSS, and JSON files in the adblock-betafish directory and list all files that need to be Prettier.
• npm run prettier-fix runs prettier and automatically replaces with Prettier versions for HTML, CSS, and JSON files in the adblock-betafish directory.
• npm run html-hint runs HTMLhint and flags any issues with the HTML templates such as missing DOCTYPE, tags and/or attributes. This does not run on pre-commits so it must be run manually. New AdBlock custom attributes should be added in /rules/static/custom_attributes.json. If mistakenly flagged, standard HTML attributes should be added in /rules/static/aria_attributes.json or /rules/static/mapped_attributes.json.

Developer Guide

General guidelines for developing AdBlock specific code.

Icons and Graphics

All graphics use SVG when at all possible. The current exception is the extension toolbar icon which is currently a PNG. There is work in progress to replace this image with SVG.

Icons use SVG web fonts. We primarily use Material Design Icons and provide a few custom icons via the AdBlock Icons project. Standard markup to display the "settings" icon would be:

<i class="material-icons">settings</i>

For WCAG compliance, we use ARIA content to make the web icons accessible for screen readers. Read the full description for details, but a summary of the steps are:

• mark the web icon element using attribute role="img"
• if the web icon is purely visual, use aria-hidden="true"
• if the web icon is semantic, use aria-label="Settings" to provide the screen reader description of the icon.

An example of an icon used as a button:

<i class="material-icons" role="img" aria-label="Extension settings">settings</i>

An example of an icon that "decorates" text and does not need to be read by the screen reader:

<i class="material-icons" role="img" aria-hidden="true">check_circle</i> We are OK

Accessibility

The following are notes for improving the accessibility of the AdBlock user interface.

Assistive Technologies

Assistive Technologies (AT) such as screen readers present the web content to users dramatically differently than the visual renderer.

It is important to optimize AT UX for "skipping" content. Important information should be presented first, followed by additional details. This allows the user to skip the reading of the detailed information if they are trying to navigate to particular sections of the UI.

AT use the HTML document structure and the semantic meaning associated with different HTML elements to assist in making content easy to understand. Many AT and their end users create custom stylesheets assigning different presentations (volumes, tone, etc) to different element types (i.e. <h1> elements may be spoken more loudly and with a deeper tone). Whenever possible use appropriate HTML elements to assist these stylesheets.

AT present the screen content as a "snapshot" of the content at the point in time when the element is visited. Dynamic content should carefully consider what the AT presentation should be when presented, and whether it's worth the distraction to the user when deciding if alerting the user of a change is desired. Content that should be dynamic should be marked the appropriate ARIA live region roles and live region attributes. It is much harder for a user of a AT to "ignore" notifications.

tabindex is a good "quick fix" for controlling AT focus. Assign a value of 0 for items that should receive keyboard focus, and a -1 for items that normally receive focus but should not for an AT. However, tabindex is a crutch - elements that receive focus should use the proper HTML elements and ARIA role attribute so the browser can automatically and "naturally" determine focus. Many users will have custom stylesheets for their AT that helps with their particular disability and those will be bypassed by using div elements for everything and brute forcing particular AT behaviors. We should consider the presence of tabindex as an "automatic technical debt" for improving the HTML in the future.

tabindex trivia: tabindex set on the label for an input transfers the focus to the input. Focus on the input reads it's label. The AT won't go into a loop or double-read the label. So setting a tabindex on the label reads the label when the input gets focus. Entering tab will go to the label but the AT won't read anything - so it feels like the tab is "broken/stuck" for the AT (visually you see the focus switch but the AT does not speak anything). The third tab then moves to the next input. Setting tabindex="-1" on the input and tabindex="0" on the label looks more correct - the label highlights and is spoken when it gets focus and keyboard input toggles (in the case of a checkbox) the input. However (on Chrome) the AT freaks out and reads all the label entries that are "nearby" in the DOM when the first input gets focus and then does not read anything else as focus moves in the "nearby group" (aka don't do it).

It is important to test using a screen reader. There is no substitute for experiencing and trying to operate the UI regularly using AT. Some small changes create amazing improvements to the AT UX and some unexpected outputs can be unusually annoying when using an AT. On Mac, use cmd-F5 to toggle Voice Over on/off (or open System Preferences | Accessibility | Voice Over) and use the keyboard for navigation. TODO Windows and Linux testing options?

Help Flow Map

The help flow structure is defined in help-map.json. Each entry represents a page in the help flow, and the key for each entry needs to be unique.

Each page can contain any combination of the following:

• title: displayed at the top of page, i18n string key, max one per page
• seques: displayed first in body of page, can have multiple per page
  • content: i18n string key, max one per segue
  • segueTo: key for help flow page to transition to on click, max one per segue
  • sequeToIfPaused: key for help flow page to transition to on click if paused, max one per segue
  • segueToIfWhitelisted: key for help flow page to transition to on click if whitelisted, max one per segue
• sections: displayed second in body of page, can have multiple per page
  • content: array of objects representing sentences to be displayed as a paragraph, can have multiple per section
    • text: i18n string key
    • linkURL: URL to be subbed into a string with link placeholders ("[[" and "]]")
• buttons: displayed third in body of page, can have multiple per page
  • text: i18n string key
  • action: function from help-action.js to be called on click
  • icon: material icons key of icon to be displayed on button, displayed before text
• footer: displayed at bottom of page, i18n string key, max one per page