More about the Clippings 2.99.2 development snapshot

As promised, here are more details on the new features introduced in the latest pre-3.0 development snapshot.

Placeholders In Clippings

You can now define placeholders inside a clipping that you will be prompted to fill in when you paste the clipping. Placeholders are essentially variables that appear in the clipping text in the format $[variable_name]. Valid variable names can contain letters (lowercase or uppercase), digits (0-9) and underscores. Example clipping with placeholders:

Hello, $[YourName], I'm glad you're coming to the club meeting at $[meeting_time]. See you $[2nite]!

When you paste a clipping with placeholders, you will be prompted to fill in the value for each placeholder in the clipping. If you want the placeholders in the clipping pasted exactly as they are, with no prompting and substitution, the clipping name should be prefixed with [NOSUBST].

There are six predefined placeholders you can use in your clippings; these predefined placeholders will be automatically substituted with their expected values when you paste the clipping.

• $[NAME] - the name of the clipping
• $[FOLDER] - the name of the folder the clipping belongs to
• $[DATE] - the current date, expressed in the format defined in your system's locale settings
  
• $[TIME] - the current time, expressed in the format defined in your system's locale settings
• $[HOSTAPP] - the name of the host application you're pasting the clipping in
• $[UA] - the user agent string of the host application

Toolbar Button for Firefox

To add this button to a toolbar in the Firefox browser window, right-click on a toolbar and choose Customize, then from the toolbar button pallete drag the Clippings button to the desired location.

Common Clippings Data for Firefox and Thunderbird

This much-requested feature allows your Clippings data to be created, accessed and modified from both Firefox and Thunderbird. That means that a clipping created in Firefox will be visible in Thunderbird; a clipping created in Firefox that is modified in Thunderbird will be updated in Firefox, too; etc.

This feature is still a work in progress with lots of bugs, and is therefore turned off by default. If you want to test this feature, be sure to familiarize yourself with the list of known issues in the post announcing the release of this milestone and the latest bug list from the Clippings website.

To enable common clippings for both host applications (Firefox and Thunderbird):

1. Download and install this release of Clippings in both host apps.
   
2. Export your clippings from both host apps. You can skip this step if you've never used Clippings before, or want to start from scratch.
   
3. Create a new boolean pref in about:config named clippings.datasource.common and set it to true. Do this for both host apps.
   
4. Exit both host apps and restart them.
5. In one of the two host apps, open Clippings Manager, then import the clippings you had exported in step 2 (Options -> Import).
6. Switch to the other host app, and from there either right-click on a text box or open Clippings Manager. You should now see the imported clippings from the other host app.
   

If this feature is enabled, your Clippings data for both host applications will be stored in your home directory. So for Linux or UNIX, this would be /home/username, and on Windows this would be C:\Documents and Settings\username.

Sometimes the tree list of clippings and folders in Clippings Manager may not be updated with the latest changes from the other host app. To refresh the display, choose Options -> Reload. (This command appears on the Options menu only if clippings.datasource.common is enabled.)

Clippings 2.99.2 development snapshot released

This is the second development milestone leading up to Clippings 3.0, intended for early adopter users who crave the latest and greatest. Users not comfortable trying out pre-release software and tolerating its many bugs should stick with Clippings 2.6 for now.

» Download: Clippings 2.99.2 (120 KB; English (United States); compatible with Firefox 1.5-2.0.0.x and Thunderbird 1.5-2.0.0.x)

If you already have a previous release of Clippings installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release. Because this is a development snapshot, no automatic upgrades to this release will be available to current Clippings users.

What's New in This Release

Here is a summary of the new features in this release. More information on these new features will be posted to this blog soon.

• Clipping placeholders. You can now define placeholders inside a clipping that you will be prompted to fill in when you paste the clipping.
• Toolbar button for Firefox.
• Common clippings data for Firefox and Thunderbird. There are a lot of bugs affecting this much-requested feature that can render it unusable; consequently this feature has been disabled by default. More details (like how to turn it on) will be forthcoming.
  

Known Issues

For the most up-to-date list of bugs, please see http://clippings.mozdev.org/bugs.html.

• Undoing deletion of a clipping with a shortcut key assigned to it will not restore its shortcut key. It is also not yet possible to undo a shortcut key assignment in Clippings Manager (bug 17531).
• Clippings Manager doesn't immediately update the shortcut key assignment on a newly-created clipping, if it was created via the New Clipping dialog box (bug 17467).
• Clippings Manager problems with Options -> Reload: repeated invocations will cause folder icons for empty folders to change to a clipping icon and then back to folder images. Also, unwanted undoing of editing actions when invoking Reload (bug 17669)
  
• Subfolders sometimes don't appear in the Clippings menu when common Clippings data is enabled; the Clippings menu needs to be invoked repeatedly to have all subfolders (empty and non-empty) appear (bug 17413).
• Shortcut key doesn't work immediately after assignment in Clippings Manager (bug 17673)
  

Help and Support

Send your questions to the Clippings mailing list at clippingsmozdevorg. Enter a new bug here (Bugzilla account on Mozdev required - or you can just post your bug report to the mailing list). Remember to check the bug list first to see if an issue you want to report has already been filed.

Clippings 2.99.1 development snapshot released

Despite the seemingly long quietness that has descended on this blog, much has been going on behind the scenes... well, in the past month, anyway... =P

This release is the first development milestone towards version 3.0. Unlike official "stable" releases like version 2.6 (the most recent one), version 2.99.1 (and others numbered 2.99.x) will contain bugs and there is a risk that your Clippings data may be lost or corrupted as a result. If that scares you, or if you're not an early adopter who craves the latest and greatest and you're not willing to tolerate bugs, then stick with Clippings 2.6 for now.

» Download: Clippings 2.99.1 (117 KB; English (United States); compatible with Firefox 1.5-2.0.0.x and Thunderbird 1.5-2.0.0.x)

If you already have a previous release of Clippings installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release. Because this is a development snapshot, no automatic upgrades to this release will be available to current Clippings users.

What's New

• Shortcut keys. You can now define a shortcut key (a single letter or digit) for a new or existing clipping. To quickly paste a clipping into a form field in a Web page in Firefox or an email message in Thunderbird, press CTRL+ALT+V, followed by its shortcut key.

There are other new features in development, including the much-requested ability to have common Clippings data for both Firefox and Thunderbird. These new features will appear as further development snapshots are released in the coming weeks.

Known Issues

• Undoing deletion of a clipping with a shortcut key assigned to it will not restore its shortcut key. It is also not yet possible to undo a shortcut key assignment in Clippings Manager (bug 17531).
• Clippings Manager doesn't immediately update the shortcut key assignment on a newly-created clipping, if it was created via the New Clipping dialog box (bug 17467).
  

Help and Support

Send your questions to the Clippings mailing list at clippingsmozdevorg.

If you find a bug, check the above Known Issues list first, and then do a bug search to ensure that it has not been already reported. If you have a Bugzilla account on Mozdev, you may file a bug report; if not you may simply post your bug report to the Clippings mailing list.