=================================================================================
Note regarding Ad Muncher v5.0:
Previously we mentioned that we were working on rewriting Ad Muncher in C for the
sake of porting, maintenance and stability. This rewrite was originally planned
as a single large release named v5.0. The plan has since changed to releasing
several interim versions on the way to v5.0, each with progressively more C code
replacing the existing assembly codebase. Ad Muncher v4.7 will be the first of
these interim releases.
=================================================================================
Note regarding beta distribution:
In order to minimize the impact of any bugs on our users, betas are released for
testing in the following order:
1. In-house testing performed by the Ad Muncher developers.
2. If no problems are found, the beta is then posted to the Ad Muncher chat
channel (#AdMuncher on EFnet). The URL of the beta will include the text
"DO_NOT_DISTRIBUTE" at this point.
3. If no problems are found, the beta is then released on the automatic update
system in Ad Muncher for people who have the option enabled to "Load
development versions of Ad Muncher".
We kindly ask that people not post betas to beta news sites when their URL
includes the "DO_NOT_DISTRIBUTE" text, as in the past this has resulted in
serious bugs being experienced by a far larger audience than was needed.
=================================================================================
Ad Muncher v4.81 Changelog
Release date: February 4th, 2010
Most significant changes: Several important bug fixes.
[Build]/[Type] - [Description] ==================================================
Key: E = Enhancement
F = Fix
31319/F - Fixed erroneous "0" that was displayed in the browser status bar
under some circumstances when it should have been blank.
31325/F - Added an interface so we can disable certain parts of the helper
script as necessary, which was required to fix a conflict with the
most recent version of Facebook's web site.
31337/F - Fixed occasional blank source URLs in log entries.
31343/F - Removed code designed to check for very very old browsers because
a conflict with some third-party software that injected scripts into
websites could not be resolved and the check would only be useful
extremely rarely.
31352/E - Added code to isolate exactly which filter any JavaScript errors
occurred in so it can be reported to the user.
31357/E - Switched to a new method of isolating errors in user-supplied JS
filters that uses much fewer browser resources and minimizes any
impact on page load times.
31362/E - Improved error reporting when a script error is detected in a
server-supplied script filter.
31364/E - If Ad Muncher is unable to access its configuration folders on
startup, it will now retry once a second for ten seconds, to avoid
problems with storing configuration files on a network drive which
is inaccessible on startup.
31375/E - Added provision in the helper script for server-supplied filters to
tweak popup blocking parameters as needed.
31376/E - Added workaround to avoid conflict with Softros LAN Messenger.
=================================================================================
Ad Muncher v4.8 Changelog (called v4.73 during testing)
Release date: October 21st, 2009
Most significant changes: A completely new system has been implemented for
filtering JavaScript content, which provides much more
reliable popup filtering and significantly reduces the
chances of unwanted interference with web sites.
Significant filtering performance improvements have also
been made, along with other minor fixes and improvements.
This release also makes Ad Muncher compatible with
Microsoft's new Windows 7.
[Build]/[Type] - [Description] ==================================================
Key: E = Enhancement
F = Fix
30408/E - Improved helper script behavior to avoid possible interference with
"onmousedown" event handling. This change also fixes the broken
drag/drop handling in Opera.
30410/E - Changed "Allow filtering enable/disable when locked" option to
"Allow Ad Muncher to be closed or disabled when locked". Ad Muncher
will now require a password to be closed if this option is disabled.
30440/E - Improved handling of winsock errors in hook DLL code.
30463/E - Improved hook loading code so that the hook DLL will be loaded more
quickly into processes which do not have any GUI showing.
30519/E - Modified Ad Muncher's library loading code so it is compatible with
Microsoft's new Windows 7 betas.
30527/E - Improved the blank FLV replacement used to replace advert FLV
content.
30541/E - Improved automatic popup removal code.
30542/F - Fixed a minor bug in the "prevent interference with mouse usage"
option.
30547/E - Fixed missing URL in page reports sent from the Opera browser
extension. Also improved the options available under the "Frame"
context menu.
30552/E - Added an option to the right-click system tray menu to check for
updates.
30553/E - When blocking the retrieval of an MP3 file, Ad Muncher will now
substitute a very short blank MP3 file. This will allow the adverts
on some streaming services to be blocked.
30562/E - Added an extra winsock hook so Ad Muncher can be notified
immediately if a connection is aborted before it connects to
Ad Muncher. This should avoid excessive resource usage and error
messages in certain situations.
30603/E - Ad Muncher's browser extensions for Firefox (v1.5+), Flock and
SeaMonkey (v2.0+) are now installed and updated automatically by the
installer. The "Browser extensions" tab of Ad Muncher's
configuration window has now been removed because it is now not
needed.
30604/F - Fixed filtering of Website Watcher.
30615/F - Fixed chrome error message from Firefox when the v2.0 browser
extensions are first installed and when Firefox doesn't have write
access to the installation directory.
30622/E - Added a mailing list signup field to the last screen of the
installer.
30627/F - Fixed XML validation errors when removing
512KB) to certain sites.
26137/E - Added code to the fault reporting HTML form to urge the user to enter
their email address and a description if not already done. We were
getting far too many fault reports with no contact information, which
can make finding the fault cause difficult or impossible in some
situations.
26153/E - Implemented workaround to a conflict with certain McAfee programs
that would block internet access when Ad Muncher and the McAfee
programs were loaded. Thanks to the McAfee developers for their help
in tracking this down.
26164/E - Improved the management of Ad Muncher's import tables, preventing some
unexpected Ad Muncher shutdowns.
26166/F - Fixed incorrect window.open replacement in certain situations.
26177/F - Fixed incorrect formatting of context menus under the latest IE 7 beta.
26187/F - Fixed crash when copying log entries to the clipboard under Windows 95
(note to other developers: LB_GETSELITEMS maximum is 16383 under 95,
not 32767 as stated in the MS documentation).
26199/E - Made the version information on the "about" tab selectable, by request.
26225/F - Fixed lockup when IP scramble options were configured in a certain
order.
26228/F - Fixed false triggering of new lockup detector if system was placed into
standby while Ad Muncher was in the middle of certain code sections.
26233/F - Fixed potential lockup in javascript filtering code.
26235/F - Improved HTML comment tag handling.
26245/F - Fixed repeated execution of Ad Muncher's helper script initialization
code on some sites, which could cause the site's content to disappear.
26289/F - Fixed memory leak on thread creation.
26307/F - Changed the comment tags around Ad Muncher's helper scripts to avoid
problems with XML pages and reinstated filtering of the
"application/xhtml+xml" content type.
26413/F - Fixed possible lockup in filtering code.
26420/E - Reduced memory usage in the filter list scanning code.
26930/E - Finished implementing a new update retrieval protocol and registration
management system. Some highlights include:
- New retrieval protocol optimized for minimum transfer size.
- Compression of updates to further reduce transfer size.
- RSA encryption of registration details to help keep them private.
- RSA signing of retrieved updates to ensure they aren't altered.
26947/F - Fixed configuration loading failure message in the new update system.
26983/F - Fixed several issues in the new update and registration system.
26999/F - Fixed bug in HTTP module that could cause post data sent in update
requests to become corrupted if the request was retried.
27002/F - Fixed taskbar icon flickering under certain conditions.
27005/F - Fixed memory leak in update code.
27025/F - Fixed bug in popup removal that was damaging several major sites
(Huge thanks to Jeff :-)
27028/E - Implemented time limit on recorded function names to decrease false
positives in popup removal code.
27050/F - Fixed bug that could cause updates to not automatically be shown
to the user after upgrading from earlier v4.7 betas.
27060/E - Modified the routing code so that if the option to "avoid binding to
loopback" is off, AM actually will bind to loopback (rather than
previously when it would bind to inaddr_any and simply connect to
loopback).
27063/F - Fixed broken browser extensions when Ad Muncher was closed and reopened
while an extended browser was running (Ad Muncher was regenerating the
browser extension password on each load unnecessarily).
27068/E - Added feedback form option to "uninstallation complete" dialog.
27100/E - Several reliability improvements to configuration loading.
27101/F - Fixed incorrect formatting of statistics when using the "Copy
statistics to clipboard" button on the "About" tab.
27105/F - Removed a limitation on the update frequency that was added for later
betas and slipped into the final build.
=================================================================================
Ad Muncher v4.6 Changelog
Release date: August 26th, 2004
Most significant changes: This release includes many usability improvements
designed to make the Ad Muncher interface easier to use.
This release also fixes two recent problems Ad Muncher
has been experiencing; firstly a conflict with Windows
XP SP 2 that could cause general protection faults to
occur in patched programs, secondly a conflict with the
newly launched "gmail" service.
Version note: This version was originally titled v4.53, but was
changed to v4.6 during development.
Additional release note: A silent update was done to build 10270 approximately
two hours after release to correct a minor help
launching problem.
[Build]/[Type] - [Description] - E=Enhancement / F=Fix ==========================
9100/E - Added a new filter category, "Minimal filtering on site", which reduces
the filtering done to only matching against the filter lists and the
safer checkbox options. This category is then used by the "Global
filters" to work around the gmail conflict.
9130/F - Modified the way Ad Muncher creates patch relocation segments to avoid
conflicts with the upcoming Windows XP SP 2. Specifically, the
segments are now marked PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE to keep the new DEP
(Data Execution Prevention) system happy.
9160/E - Added "size grip" control to the bottom right corner of the config
window, making it clear that the window actually can be resized.
(suggestion by several people)
9172/E - Various buttons around the configuration window are now disabled when
they have no use, eg: the "modify" button is disabled when no filter
is selected.
xxxx/E - At various stages in development the wording and layout throughout the
dialogs was revised to increase clarity, a few examples are:
- The "custom filter list" was renamed to "Your filters", and the
"server-supplied list" was renamed to "Global filters"; hopefully
new users should find these labels a little easier to understand.
- "Your filters" was later renamed to "My filters" for consistency
with other applications ("My computer" / "My documents" / etc).
- "Global filters" were later renamed to "Default filters" - so far
this is the least complained-about name ;-)
- The IP Scramble dialog was rearranged in an attempt to make the
system a little easier to navigate.
- Renamed most of the filter categories and "recent lists" names so
they make sense for people who don't write HTML for a living ;-)
- The system tray menu text was changed from "Blocked popups" to
"Open blocked popups" to avoid the confusion some users experienced.
- The "pause" button on the recent lists was changed to "freeze";
as some people were clicking it in an attempt to "pause" Ad
Muncher's filtering.
- Also related to the above, implemented a checkbox to "Enable
filtering" on the configuration dialog itself (to save you having
to do it from the system tray).
- Rearranged the tabs in the "options" section into increasing order
of complexity (simplest ones on the left).
- Moved the recent lists onto their own tab. This was partly done
as it vastly cleans up the "my filters" tab, and partly because
this is how it will be required to be for the upcoming v5 (due to
the new filter layouts).
- Renamed the "Advanced Filters" tab to "Replace Text", to help
people more readily understand exactly what an "advanced" filter
does.
- The icon used by the configuration window now also changes to
indicate whether filtering is currently enabled or not.
- Many other changes throughout the dialogs, mostly self-explanatory.
9351/E - Added code to remember the column sizes on your filter list and the
global filter list. Also renamed a lot of the filters (again) after
seeing suggestions from people who tried the first version.
9380/F - Fixed bug where, if a certain sequence of actions was taken beforehand,
adding new URL-based filters from the recent lists would result in
blank filter entries being added.
9500/E - The custom filter list can now be sorted by clicking on the column
headers. This also allows you to sort primarily by keyword or
category as you prefer.
9540/E - You can now right-click on entries in your filter list to show a menu
with options to copy them to the clipboard.
9576/E - Added a field to the helper script to show the IP/port of the site the
page was retrieved from. This is especially useful when IP Scramble
is enabled as you can then see which proxy was used to retrieve which
page.
9686/F - The recents listbox now won't scroll your selected items down just past
the bottom of the list when updating.
9715/F - Fixed occasional crash when more than 8 ident requests were processed
by the inbuilt chat client.
9760/F - Fixed misalignment of some dialog text when viewed with certain font
sizes.
9795/E - Added option to log options to "Enable logging system", which can of
course be disabled to turn off all logging.
9821/F - Added code to check for non-http URLs before trying to retrieve by
JS image object creation (fixes stall in opera under certain
conditions).
9834/E - Ad Muncher's popup removal system now correctly deals with popups
generated using the showHelp() and createPopup() functions.
9842/F - Fixed a problem with how Ad Muncher was handling certain incorrectly
terminated HTML comments.
9897/E - Added an option to the right-click menu in the log lists to allow
you to open highlighted URLs in your browser.
9960/F - *Finally* found out what was causing the mysteriously reproducing
"Add filter" dialogs (hint: site needs to be loading while the "add
filter" dialog is open) - thanks again to shan for finding that one :-)
10034/E - Added "Search" button to the logs, custom filter and default filter
lists, of course now allowing you to search these lists.
10065/E - Rewrote the scrolling routine for the logs tab so automatic scrolls
due to auto-updates or searching behave in a more predictable fashion.
10072/F - Fixed bug in javascript spacer handling that could damage certain
spacer types.
10087/F - Fixed some problems with the behavior of buttons on the "Replace text"
dialog.
10128/E - Several enhancements to the html deobfuscation systems; some to
prevent certain page damage, and some to reformat certain types of
html/js layouts for more reliable filtering.
10160/F - Fixed several minor formatting and grammatical errors on the interface
which were noticed while writing the new help file. Also renamed the
"System tray" tab to "Interface", which describes its contents a lot
better.
10166/F - Fixed a crash which could occur when attempting to enable IP Scramble
with an empty "Verified proxy list".
10180/E - Implemented a new option on the "Interface" tab to "Remember which
section of the configuration window was last open", due to popular
demand.
10187/E - Went through all the dialogs and made the single-line edit boxes a
uniform height (about time).
10190/F - Fixed a few minor bugs with the handling of tab changing and
invalid filter prompts.
10204/E - Rewrote the system tray icon handling code. It now doesn't block
code paths if the icon can't be created immediately, and doesn't
show an error message if the icon cannot be created immediately.
10231/F - Fixed long-standing bug that caused the user's guide to be displayed
behind the active windows when first opened.
Ad Muncher v4.52 Changelog
Release date: May 6th, 2004
[Build]/[Type] - [Description] - E=Enhancement / F=Fix ==========================
8440/F - Fixed focus() removal issue which was causing problems with certain MSN
and hotmail pages.
8460/E - Implemented new cleaner icon designs.
8466/E - The registration reminder screen now no longer appears as a top-most
window, making it easier to keep it open while visiting the registration
web page.
8481/F - Fixed problem where window.open could be replaced with a shorter function
name, leading to problems with the white space introduced in certain tag
structures.
8483/F - Fixed bug in meta-reload target URL detection code, where it could be
analyzed incorrectly if the refresh time value contained a period.
8486/F - Import/export "browse" function now correctly appends the .AMC extension
when it is absent.
8487/F - Import/export system now automatically shows the "browse" dialog if you
click the "import"/"export" button without selecting a file.
8499/F - Fixed bug where the IRC chat client could leave a connection open
under certain conditions.
8696/E - Completed the final touches on an cosmetic overhaul including:
- Realignment of all dialogs to maximize use of available space.
- Greatly improved window resizing code, allowing most tabs on the
config window to be resized while maintaining control spacing and
generally giving a far more usable layout.
- Config window now remembers its sizing to take full advantage of the
new window resizing code.
- Child windows on the config window are now automatically centered.
8708/F - Fixed lingering problem with hotmail pages.
8710/F - Fixed minor filter-related problem which could remove large chunks of
content from certain yahoo pages.
8711/F - Fixed possible crash when an insane number of connections (512+) were
routed through Ad Muncher.
8721/E - Whipped up a program to scan through Ad Muncher's source code to detect
any redundant code or buffers, managed to cut a few hundred KB off Ad
Muncher's memory usage as a result.
8722/F - Ad Muncher's fault handling now doesn't trigger on stack overflows,
preventing unnecessary fault reports when a large degree of recursion
was taking place.
8723/E - Enhanced patching system so it can now correctly detect the opcode
length of "mov e?x, ???, jmp e?x" patches as installed by some other
programs.
8728/F - Fixed possible crash when recovering from faults in external
closesocket patches.
8731/F - Fixed possible crash when extremely long entries were added to the
custom list from the "recent items" lists.
8742/F - Modified calling of the Sleep() API to silently handle GPFs within the
function - have had quite a few fault reports which indicated this
fault (perhaps a driver issue?) and this should at least allow them
to continue working.
8746/E - Ad Muncher now displays a message to the user when there is
insufficient memory available, instead of just generating a fault
report.
8759/F - Fixed bug where AMAFstring.dat and AMAFstringsa.dat could appear for
no reason in Ad Muncher's start menu group.
8777/F - Fixed bug where in certain situations Ad Muncher's URL reconstituter
could incorrectly include single-quotation marks, which could then
not be filtered due to automatic filter-conversions to double-quotes.
8778/F - Fixed minor bug which could corrupt javascript content when
attempting to circumvent certain content spacer types.
8809/E - Made several enhancements to the way Ad Muncher writes/reads to/from
sockets, which will result in better utilization of available
buffers, and should produce slightly faster transfers on very
fast connections or low-spec computers.
8931/E - Spent a while performance-tuning the dialog resizing system to avoid
flickering as much as possible while resizing, and also to shorten
initial dialog display times.
8939/E - When Ad Muncher aborts filtering of a page due to unrecognized
content encodings it will now display a message stating that in the
"triggered filters" recent list.
8940/E - The "Remove background music and sound files" option now also
prevents mp3s from playing in the background.
8953/E - Param tag analysis now treats name=src the same way as name=movie
8956/E - Ad Muncher will now automatically load the default server list included
in its .exe file if the list build number is higher than the one stored
in the ServerStrings.dat file.
8981/E - After many requests, and 5 years of intensive development, we are
very pleased to announce... *drum roll* ...the Ad Muncher system tray
icon now makes cute little munching faces when it blocks an advert!
A mostly useless option, but we've had so many requests for it over the
years that including it is bound to make some (admittedly strange)
people happy :-)
It can of course be disabled if required, but when active it will
"munch" once for each advert removed, but for no more than a few seconds
after the page has been loaded (so it's not munching continuously long
after an advert-heavy page has loaded).
9000/E - Removed the code to remove title= specs under Opera, as all recent
versions (since 7.2) handle it in the same way as IE/Netscape.
Ad Muncher v4.51a Changelog
Release date: December 17th, 2003
[Build]/[Type] - [Description] - E=Enhancement / F=Fix ==========================
8416/F - The only change in this version was a small fix to restore hotmail.com
to working order. The site was considered important enough to justify a
quick release to correct the issue.
Ad Muncher v4.51 Changelog
Release date: September 13th, 2003
Most significant changes: New filter scanning system which has improved filtering
speed on some sites by as much as 30 times, should make
a noticeable difference in browsing speed, especially
on faster connections. Plus the usual round of bug
fixes and filtering enhancements.
Note: a small update was done after v4.51 release, to build number 8415, which
only included some additions to the server-supplied list.
[Build]/[Type] - [Description] - E=Enhancement / F=Fix ==========================
7000/E - New format for changelog so people can see what's new to each specific
beta build, due to popular demand ;-)
7015/E - Added new "Recent requests" section to the fault reporting module, as
people generally had a lot of trouble remembering the sites they were
on when a fault had occurred.
7033/E - Added code to change:
"64kb warning dialog)
7060/E - Added "suggest" button to the filter targets dialog (when the server-
supplied list is displayed).
7106/E - Extended filter targets matching so +process:80 also matches against
common proxy ports like 1080, 3128, 8080, etc.
7113/F - Fixed the mozilla warnings that window.events, document.onmousedown
and document.layers weren't defined.
7150/F - Fixed bugs in previous v4.51 betas which were causing some popups to
be blocked when they shouldn't be, and certain onload structures to
be not executed correctly.
7163/E - Improved filtering performance by minimizing unnecessary checks of
the custom/server filter list.
7168/F - Changed the blank image replacement setup so it replaced 468x60
images with a blank 468x60 image (rather than a 1x1 image) to avoid
problems when a page only had a width or height spec in its
... (with the ">" immediately
following