26 April 2008

Panic Button beta on Mac OS X

Since I don't have a Mac machine of my own, I went to a university computer lab to test Panic Button on Mac OS X. The bugs I found are numerous; in particular, the default Panic Button action "Hide All Windows" is unusable.

Mac OS X bug list, in decreasing order of severity:
  • Restore Session toolbar doesn't work (bug 19026)
  • Extension preferences dialog is totally blank (bug 19025)
  • F9 key conflict with Exposé (bug 19024)
  • Quit action doesn't quit (bug 19027)
Click on the links to see the Bugzilla bug report.

Changing the Panic Button action to "Minimize All Windows" is the best workaround for now -- as well as avoiding the F9 key. Since the extension pref dialog is broken, Mac OS X users would need to change the integer pref named panicbutton.action in about:config. Use an integer value of 1 to specify the "Minimize All Windows" option.

Next, I will need to test Panic Button on a Linux box, preferably using the KDE and Gnome desktop environments. More to follow.

08 April 2008

Another Panic Button beta release!

This new beta release offers new customization options to make the Panic Button toolbar button less conspicuous to whomever you want to hide your web browsing from. =)

Meant for early adopters craving the latest and greatest, this beta release is being made available for testing, and should only be installed if you are willing to tolerate a few bugs. If that scares you, then you shouldn't install it.

» Download: Panic Button 0.9.2 (21 KB; English (United States); compatible with Firefox 2.0-3.0b5)

If you already have the previous release of Panic Button installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release.

What's New
  • You can set the Panic Button toolbar button caption and image (six toolbar image choices to choose from; more will be added later). These customizations can be set in the extension options dialog (Tools → Add-ons from the Firefox browser window, select Panic Button in the list of extensions and click Options).
  • Bug fix: On Firefox 3.0b3 and newer, hide all windows didn't work if an XUL dialog is open (bug 18637)
  • Compatible with the latest Firefox beta release: 3.0b5.

Known Issues
  • The Panic Button action option to hide all windows doesn't work if a system native file picker dialog box (Open, Save As) is open in any of the browser windows at the time the Panic Button action is invoked (bug 18629). This bug doesn't occur on Firefox 3.
  • Any preferences in the extension options dialog that are set will be applied to all browser windows that are open after clicking OK, except for the option "F9 key invokes Panic Button action" -- changes to this option will take effect in new browser windows only or when exiting and restarting Firefox.

Help and Support

Feedback on this extension is welcome. General comments and bug reports may be submitted by going to the AE Creations home page and clicking Contact. If you have a Bugzilla account on Mozdev, you may file a bug report here (please make sure you specify Panic Button on the bug summary field).