23 April 2006

Clippings 1.99.3 Released - Testers Wanted

A development snapshot release of Clippings is now available for testers and those brave early-adopter types who crave the latest and greatest.

If you already have Clippings 1.x installed, you need to uninstall it first before installing this development release.

Download link: http://downloads.mozdev.org/clippings/devel/clippings-1.99.3-en-US.xpi (38 KB; compatible with Firefox 1.0.x - 1.5.0.x)
All development snapshots to date can be found here: http://downloads.mozdev.org/clippings/devel/

A quick note about version numbering: "1.99" means that this is a development snapshot of what will eventually become Clippings 2.0. The revision digit "3" indicates that this is the third development snapshot.

Most of the changes that were made in this release are in Clippings Manager. More details about what's new and known issues can be found below. But before proceeding further, please take a moment to read the following warning.

WARNING!

This release is made available for testing purposes only. While it has been made as stable as reasonably possible for a testing release, there will be bugs and there are no guarantees that data loss, data corruption and general loss of functionality won't happen. If this scares you, you should probably stick with the current stable release, or wait until Clippings 2.0 is out.

What's New
  • Folders and subfolders to organize your clippings.
  • New "Move To" and "Copy To" commands in Clippings Manager to file clippings into folders (right-click on an entry in the Clippings Manager tree list).
  • Automatic back up of Clippings data. Back up files are stored in a ".clipbak" folder in your Firefox user profile folder.
Known Issues
  • New folder creation and deletion, as well as copying/moving folders and clippings into other folders, is currently not undoable.
  • Move Up and Move Down commands in Clippings Manager may not always work.
  • Only one item at a time may be selected in the Clippings Manager tree list.
  • Drag 'n drop in Clippings Manager tree list does not work.
  • Clippings import and export limitations (see "Things You Should Know About" below)
  • The status bar count is inaccurate. It only counts the number of items in the top-level folder (the ever-mysterious "[clippings-root]").
  • (Firefox 1.0.x only) If you move a folder or clipping once, it is not possible to perform another move operation again until you close and reopen Clippings Manager. The same applies to copying a folder or clipping.
Things You Should Know About

Folders names in menus are set off in square brackets; for example, "[My Stuff]". There are no cute little folder icons yet.

The new folders feature necessitated a new data source structure, which is NOT compatible with Clippings 1.x. As a result, the Clippings data is stored in a new file in your user profile directory, clipdat2.rdf. (Clippings 1.x data is stored in clipdat.rdf.)

Your existing Clippings data (if you had Clippings 1.x before) will be automatically imported into the new data source file when you start Firefox the first time after installing this release of Clippings. The old Clippings 1.x data source file, clipdat.rdf, will be left untouched, in case you want to revert back to Clippings 1.x.

As stated above, the new data source structure is NOT compatible with Clippings 1.x. It is not possible yet to export to Clippings 1.x - this will be fixed in a future development release. Incidentally, it is not yet possible to import from the new Clippings data format, although you can import from Clippings 1.x data files.

Reporting Bugs

If you find a bug, first reread the above to see if it's not already a known issue. Then do a search here to see if it's hasn't already been reported yet. If it is indeed a new bug, please file a bug report at http://bugzilla.mozdev.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=clippings. A Bugzilla account on Mozdev is required.

Thanks for trying out Clippings.

13 April 2006

Hello, World.

If you've stumbled here by accident, or was referred to here to learn more about the goings-on with Clippings (the nifty li'l text snippet saving tool for Firefox that I'm presently working on), welcome.

For the past few weeks, I've been working hard - struggling at times - to implement the new features that will be going into Clippings 2.0; in particular, support for subfolders, which has proven to be a pain, more so since the Clippings 1.x series only creates new clippings in a flat list. But I'm been able to get Clippings Manager to work, somewhat, and the context browser submenu now sprouts new submenus for each folder created.

As development of Clippings 2.0 progresses, I will be making a series of development snapshot releases available for testers and those who absolutely must live on the bleeding edge (ack, I'm getting tired of hearing that cliché). They will be announced here as well on the mailing list when they're released.

Ordinary end users who can't put up with bugs, crashes, and the possibility of data loss should avoid them and wait for the final release of Clippings 2.0. But for the rest of the adventurous folks eager to try out the latest and greatest, stay tuned.

09 April 2006

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...

More content will arrive shortly as I get this new blog set up. Please check back again soon.