Panic Button 1.0 release candidate 1

This release candidate should resemble the 1.0 release of Panic Button, barring any last-minute showstopper bugs. It is now available for download from Mozilla Add-ons.

Changes from the previous betas

There are now twenty toolbar button icons to choose from to make the Panic Button - er, button - less conspicuous to whomever you're trying to hide your web surfing from. =)

If you installed any of the previous beta releases, you may notice that the Panic Button toolbar button image is reverted back to the default image. You will need to go into extension preferences and set the toolbar button image again.

This release adds support for these languages: English (United States), Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish.

Help and Support

Send your comments and bug reports to the AE Creations mailing list. If there are no serious showstopper bugs, the 1.0 release will be pushed out in a week.

Clippings 3.0.1 released

A new version of Clippings has been released and is now available for download from Mozilla Add-ons.

If you already have Clippings installed, it will be upgraded for you if automatic extension updates are enabled. Otherwise, open Extension Manager (Tools → Add-ons), then right-click on the entry for Clippings in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Update.

Please note that Firefox 1.5 and Thunderbird 1.5 are no longer supported.

What's New

This release fixes several bugs. Improvements include:

• On Linux, the Clippings Manager window position is saved. Previously, Clippings Manager always appeared at the top left corner of the screen
• On Mac OS X, the instructions in the New Clipping dialog and Clippings Manager on how to paste a clipping using shortcut keys has been clarified
• Fixed a Clippings Manager bug that caused an error when creating a new clipping if there were no clippings and common clippings was enabled
• Also in Clippings Manager, users are now prevented from exporting clippings to a datasource file of the same name in the same folder. This is to prevent a bug where clippings are appended to the data in the existing Clippings file if the user had chosen to overwrite it.

Help and Support

Send your questions, comments and bug reports to the Clippings mailing list.

Panic Button compatibility with Firefox 3

I wrote that all three extensions by AE Creations are compatible with Firefox 3 which was released last Tuesday. Turns out I was wrong -- at least for Panic Button. I don't know if this has something to do with the fact that Panic Button is in the Mozilla Add-ons sandbox, but changing the target application max version to 3.0.* didn't have any effect for that extension.

To get around this, I quickly built and uploaded a new version of Panic Button, numbered 0.9.3.1, to Mozilla Add-ons. The only change to it is in the install manifest, where the maxVersion was incremented to "3.0.*".

This update is now available on the Panic Button page on Mozilla Add-ons. I will no longer be providing download links here on this blog, as I've been finding releases to be harder to manage when I have them linked from three different places and uploaded to two different download servers.

Workaround to Clippings and Menu Editor conflict

I wrote about a problem that was experienced by many users who also have Menu Editor installed. The problem was that if Menu Editor is installed, the clippings and folders on the Clippings submenu of the browser context menu would disappear.

I discovered a workaround using a new feature of Clippings Manager that I totally forgot about. In Clippings 3.0, you can paste a clipping by double-clicking a clipping in Clippings Manager's tree list. Here are the steps:

1. Click on the text box where you want to paste a clipping.
2. Right-click to invoke the context menu, then choose Clippings → Organize Clippings. This will open Clippings Manager.
3. Find the desired clipping in the tree list and double-click on it. The selected clipping will be pasted into the web page text box at the cursor position.

This alternative method of pasting a clipping essentially lets you do so without using the browser context menu.

Firefox 3

Firefox 3 is now officially released. Among many, many improvements, this new version contains end-user improvements in performance, enhanced bookmark and history system, and a more intelligent address bar (nicknamed the Awesome Bar).

The latest versions of the three Firefox extensions by AE Creations -- Clippings, Send Tab URLs and Panic Button -- are compatible with Firefox 3. If you are upgrading Firefox to this new version, and the AE Creations extensions you have are not the latest versions, you may be prompted to update them when Firefox 3 starts after the upgrade.

Clippings not compatible with Menu Editor on Firefox 3

Many users have reported that on Firefox 3 with Menu Editor installed, the Clippings submenu on the browser's context menu won't display any clippings and folders. This problem is reportedly reproducible on Firefox 3; this problem is not occurring on Firefox 2.

This conflict occurs once Menu Editor is installed and its extension preferences dialog is invoked from Tools → Add-ons in Firefox.

There is presently no workaround to this bug. Disabling or uninstalling Menu Editor appears to be the only way to bring back your clippings and folders in the Clippings submenu on the browser's context menu.