A new WebExtension version of the popular content blocker uBlock Origin was just uploaded to Mozilla’s official add-ons repository for Firefox.
The new version is compatible with Firefox’s new WebExtensions standard for extensions, and will as such continue to work when Firefox 57 gets released.
This first official release of the WebExtensions version of uBlock Origin works for the most part just like the legacy add-on version.
Users may experience issues however when they upgrade from the legacy version of the add-on to the new version.
Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin suggests that 32-bit users of Firefox stay on version 1.13.8 of the add-on until these issues are resolved.
One issue that users may run into is a storage limit bug for extra filter lists. Basically, what happens is that not all filter lists will be loaded, and that this behavior can break the updating of filter lists that were loaded.
Also, there appears to be a limit to how much data can be stored in indexedDB, so if you have many more extra filter lists, not all of them will be able to load, and this can also break the future updating of whichever filter lists could load. In short, total mess. Just as I feared, there are issues with indexedDB.
Another issue that some users may experience is that custom settings may not be available anymore.
If that is the case, the following workaround is suggested to resolve the issue:
- Install uBlock Origin 1.13.8 from Mozilla AMO.
- Open the uBlock Origin Settings, and select the “back up to file” option on the page. This exports all settings to the local system.
- Install the latest version of uBlock Origin again.
- Open the Settings page, and select the “restore from file” option this time to import the settings if they are still not there after the update to the latest version of uBlock Origin.
Read also: Firefox will only support WebExtensions by the end of 2017
Raymond Hill published a workaround for another issue that users of the extension may experience after updating to version 1.13.10. If uBlock is broken after the update, users are asked to do the following:
Un-install uBO
Quit Firefox (be sure Firefox is really no longer in memory)
Launch Firefox
Verify that uBO is really removed in about:addons, otherwise, go to step 1.
Quit Firefox (be sure Firefox is really no longer in memory)
Launch Firefox
Re-install uBO
If that does not work, a fallback to version 1.13.8 — the legacy version — is required to restore functionality. Firefox users have two options then:
- Backup all your settings, then install the pure webext version of uBO from the dev channel on AMO, which is not affected by the root issue. Once you have installed the pure webext version, restore your settings from the backup file.
- Keep using 1.13.8 until Firefox 56 (in which the root issue is fixed). If you choose this option, you should probably disable the auto-update for uBO. For Android, there is a setting to disable auto-update of extensions, but it applies to all extensions: about:config => extensions.autoupdate.enabled => false.
Additional information are available on uBlock Origin’s Mozilla AMO page, and the GitHub project site.