Send Tab URLs to-do list

The next version of Send Tab URLs will be numbered 1.0 to reflect its stability and maturity (i.e., few new features needs to be added to this extension). Here are a few items left to tackle:

• Need to handle the situation where there is no title for a web page displayed in a tab (bug 18641)
• Remove trailing space at end of web page title (bug 18663)
• Make Send Tab URLs work with Gmail or other default, web-based email clients
  

Panic Button to-do list

Here is a list of items to be completed before I release version 1.0 of Panic Button:

• Add a few more Panic Button icon choices.
• Further tweaking of the available Panic Button icons, including creation of another set of similar toolbar button images that appear when hovering over them with a mouse.
  
• [Restore Session toolbar] Get rid of the useless disabled close button on the title bar.
• [Restore Session toolbar] Automatic repositioning of the floating toolbar if switching to text and icon view, and the toolbar is at the far right of the screen. Currently, part of the floating toolbar disappears into the right edge of the screen if the toolbar layout is changed.
• Localization.
  

Currently, Panic Button is in the sandbox on Mozilla Add-ons. Once version 1.0 is released, I will nominate it to have it changed to a publicly-accessible extension. This would mean that a Mozilla Add-ons user will not have to log in to download and install it, as is the case today.

Lost messages to the Clippings mailing list

It has been brought to my attention that some emails to the Clippings mailing list haven't been getting through. After some digging around, I found that the mailing list spam filters I had set up were too restrictive, and were automatically discarding legitimate messages. I have made some adjustments to the spam filters; legitimate messages should no longer be flagged as spam.

If you tried to email a message to the Clippings mailing list in the past few weeks, and can't find your message in the list archives, try emailing your message again.

Mozilla Add-ons T-shirt

Finally, I have something to show for all the effort, the long hours and sleepless nights, the blood, sweat, tears and raw passion I put into my Firefox extensions -- a free T-shirt!

The front.

The back.

These were sent to Mozilla Add-ons developers who submitted their Firefox 3-compatible extensions early. This T-shirt arrived by UPS last week, and I now have it proudly hung on the wall by my desk at work. I haven't put on the T-shirt yet. But I consider this to be an article of memorabilia that is simply too precious to wear -- although it could use some ironing....

Yet another Panic Button beta release!

Fixes for several showstopper bugs on Mac OS X necessitated another beta release.

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 0.9.3 (25 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

• Improved default toolbar button icon.
• Several platform-specific bug fixes for Mac OS X and Linux. The bug fixes are detailed in the previous post.
  

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. (On Mac OS X, the option will be labeled "Command+F9 key invokes Panic Button action.")
  
• Customizations not being remembered between host app toolbar button changes (bug 18954)
  

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).

Panic Button fixes for Mac OS X and Linux

Ah, the joys of cross-platform development....

Several bug fixes have landed to fix a few issues found on Mac OS X and Linux. The fixes were tested on Mac OS X 10.5.1 ("Leopard") and Ubuntu 8.04 ("Hardy Heron"). For the latter, testing was performed using Gnome 2.22.1 and KDE 4.

The bug fixes, summarized below, will be included in the next beta release.

Mac OS X fixes

The extension preferences dialog (in Firefox, Tools → Add-ons, select Panic Button then click Preferences) is no longer blank (this was bug 19025).

The Restore Session toolbar is now working. Previously, the floating toolbar couldn't be moved properly, and clicking on it didn't do anything (bug 19026).

Firefox will really quit if Quit is set as the Panic Button action. And if Hide All Windows is the Panic Button action, Firefox will really quit if you clicked Exit on the Restore Session toolbar. Previously, all application windows would close, but you would still have to manually quit Firefox by choosing Firefox → Quit Firefox or pressing Command+Q (bug 19027).

The shortcut key to invoke the Panic Button action on the Mac is now Command+F9. The F9 key as used on Windows and Linux conflicts with Exposé (bug 19024).

Linux fixes

The extension preferences dialog only had a Close button; there was no way to apply changes to settings (bug 19051). This has been fixed so that it now has OK and Cancel buttons.