Clippings 4.1.2 released!

A minor release of Clippings is now available from Mozilla Add-ons and the AE Creations website.  This release addresses a major issue that was observed by users of Firefox 36 nightly builds.

If you already have an older version of 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 in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Update.

What's New

• Fixed an error that was appearing at browser startup in Firefox 36 nightly builds (issue #22)
• Other maintenance fixes (issue #16, issue #24)

Help and Support

Questions and comments about Clippings should be directed to the AE Creations Help and Support forums, hosted on Google Groups.

Clippings shortcut prefix keys not working in Gmail

Users have reported that the shortcut prefix keys, CTRL+ALT+V (on Mac OS X, Command+Option+V) does not work in Gmail's message editor.  Pressing those keys have no effect, or would cause a beeping sound.

As explained in a post to the AE Creations Help and Support forum, the issue lies with Gmail filtering out these keys when the cursor is inside the message editor; it doesn't happen when the cursor is in the To or Subject fields.  I experimented with changing the Clippings keys using the KeyConfig extension (e.g., assign  CTRL+F4 to the "Insert Clipping" action), but that did not work.

Interestingly enough, other Google products that I've tried are not impacted by this issue -- specifically, Google Groups (when writing a forum post), Google Chat (when typing a chat message) and Blogger (when writing a blog post such as this one). 

My only suggestion would be to submit your comments to Gmail support.  Sorry.

Panic Button 2.0.2 released!

A minor release of Panic Button is now available from Mozilla Add-ons and the AE Creations website.

If you already have an older version of Panic Button 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 Panic Button in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Update.

What's New

• Added Japanese localization
• Minor tweaks to the icons in the extension preferences dialog

Help and Support

Questions and comments about Panic Button should be directed to the AE Creations forums, now hosted on Google Groups.

Donate Today!

As with other AE Creations extensions, Panic Button was created during my spare time.  If you enjoy using Panic Button, consider donating to show your support!  Interested donors can go to this page to make a donation.

Error in Delicious Post when posting a page or link to Delicious

Ever since Delicious was taken over by Science Inc. (its third owner, after changing hands from its original founder to Yahoo!, then to AVOS), there have been some strange, intermittent errors reported by some users -- and noticed by Yours Truly as well.  (Yes, I use my own extension daily and consider myself its Number One user.  Feel free to peruse my Delicious bookmarks at your leisure.)

(Non-)Error When Posting

Sometimes, when posting a page or link to Delicious using Delicious Post, it takes a long time for the posting to occur, as evident by the animated status bar icon which never seems to go away.  Afterwards, you may get an error such as the following:

An error you may encounter from Delicious Post.

The message may be different; it may read: "Failed to post to Delicious: error adding link."

In the past, the bookmark for the page or link you were trying to post with Delicious Post was not created because of these errors.  But now, despite these errors, your new Delicious bookmark may be successfully created.  Log in to your Delicious page to confirm.

These mysterious errors are coming from Delicious.com; Delicious Post is simply relaying these errors back to you.

Authentication Failed

If you try to post a page or link using Delicious Post, you may get the error: "Authentication failed."  The bookmark will not be created.

If this happens, try opening a new browser tab, log in to your Delicious account, then try again.

Don't log out of the Delicious website; simply close the browser tab.  As long as your Delicious website login remains active, you won't get this error anymore.

This error may be a consequence of Delicious Post relying on the old authentication mechanism, as opposed to the new OAuth 2.0 API that should be used.  I've never been able to get that to work due to the inaccurate OAuth documentation that the Science developers have provided.  There is no developer forum for Delicious that I've seen, and an email that I sent to them has been ignored.

Update: The "Authentication failed" error will persist if Firefox is in Private Browsing mode, even if you are already logged in to Delicious.com.  Unfortunately, this means that Delicious Post is not compatible with Private Browsing mode.

Clippings 4.1.1 released!

A minor release of Clippings is now available from Mozilla Add-ons and the AE Creations website.  This release addresses a few minor issues as well as a significant breakage on a recent nightly build of Firefox 35.

If you already have an older version of 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.

What's New

• Bug fix: Clippings does not work (missing context menu item, shortcut key prefix unresponsive) on Firefox 35 nightly build (issue #18)
• Bug fix: Shortcut key list is duplicated when Print or Save is repeatedly invoked in the Clippings Shortcut Keys window (issue #14)
• Other minor fixes

Help and Support

Questions and comments about Clippings should be directed to the AE Creations forums, now hosted on Google Groups.

Panic Button 2.0.1 released!

A new minor release of Panic Button is now available from Mozilla Add-ons and the AE Creations website.

If you already have an older version of Panic Button 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 Panic Button in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Update.


What's New

• Added Korean, Polish and Russian localizations
• Bug fix: Panic Button action isn't invoked if the Software Update dialog is open at the same time (issue #12)
• Other minor fixes (issue #10, issue #14)

Help and Support

Questions and comments about Panic Button should be directed to the AE Creations forums, now hosted on Google Groups.

Send Tab URLs 2.2 released!

A new release of Send Tab URLs is now available from Mozilla Add-ons and the AE Creations website.

If you already have an older version of Send Tab URLs 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 Send Tab URLs in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Update.

What's New

• Integration with the new Firefox Australis user interface
• Support for Google Apps Gmail. This was previously an experimental feature; it is now turned on by default
• Bug fix: Tab titles display as "null" in the URL list if Send Tab URLs was invoked after the browser session was restored (issue #1)

 
Things You Should Know About

As of version 2.2, the following email clients are no longer supported (but may still work): Mozilla Suite, Eudora, Outlook Express, Windows Mail.

Help and Support

Questions and comments about Send Tab URLs should be directed to the AE Creations forums, now hosted on Google Groups. 

Delicious Post 1.6 released!

A new minor release of Delicious Post is now available from Mozilla Add-ons and the AE Creations website.

If you already have an older version of Delicious Post 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 Delicious Post in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Update.

What's New

• Integration with the Firefox Australis user interface
• Bug fix: Not all special characters are being handled properly
• Bug fix: Progress icon no longer appears in status bar. This fix is available for Firefox 29 and newer, and requires Status-4-Evar to display

Supported languages: English (United States), French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.

Help and Support

Questions and comments about Delicious Post should be directed to the AE Creations forums, now hosted on Google Groups. 

Panic Button 2.0 released!

Finally... the wait is over.  After months of hard work, version 2.0 of Panic Button is now available!  Read on to learn more about the cool new features in this release, and how to get it.

What's New in Panic Button 2.0

• Integration with the new Firefox Australis user interface
• Updated appearance of the 20 built-in Panic Button toolbar icons (Linux users on Firefox 28 or older will still see the old icons)
• Redesigned extension preferences dialog
• Customizable shortcut key for invoking the Panic Button action.  Choose from any of the function keys (F1 to F12), as well as the arrow keys, Page Up and Page Down, and a few others.  These can be combined with modifier keys; e.g., Ctrl+Shift
• Instantly customize the Panic Button toolbar button icon by right-clicking on the button and then selecting the desired icon from the Select An Icon panel. Available on Firefox 29 and newer; not available on Mac OS X
• Now works when the browser is in Private Browsing mode.  When the browser session is restored, the windows retain their Private Browsing status

Supported languages: English (United States), Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Turkish.

How to Get It

Panic Button 2.0 is available from the AE Creations website, or from Mozilla Add-ons.

If you already have an older version of Panic Button installed, it will be upgraded for you if automatic extension updates are enabled. Otherwise, open Add-ons Manager, then right-click on the entry for Panic Button in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Updates.

Help and Support

Questions and comments about Panic Button should be directed to the AE Creations forums, now hosted on Google Groups.  

Panic Button 2.0 release candidate 1

After months of hard work, the release candidate of Panic Button 2.0 is now available!

Barring any last-minute show-stopper bugs, this may become the public release of Panic Button 2.0.  This release should be much more stable than the previous beta releases; but if in doubt, stick with version 1.5.3.1 for now.


What's New in Version 2.0

This is a list of all the new features and improvements in Panic Button 2.0:

• Integration with the new Firefox Australis user interface
• Updated appearance of the 20 built-in Panic Button toolbar icons (Linux users on Firefox 28 or older will still see the old icons)
• Redesigned extension preferences dialog
• Customizable shortcut key for invoking the Panic Button action.  Choose from any of the function keys (F1 to F12), as well as the arrow keys, Page Up and Page Down, and a few others.  These can be combined with modifier keys; e.g., Ctrl+Shift.  The F9 key continues to be the default shortcut key; for Mac OS X users, Command+F9 is no longer the alternate shortcut key since Exposé, which used the F9 key, has been replaced with Launchpad in recent OS X versions
• Instantly customize the Panic Button toolbar button icon by right-clicking on the button and then selecting the desired icon from the Select An Icon panel. Available on Firefox 29 and newer; not available on Mac OS X
• Now works when the browser is in Private Browsing mode.  When the browser session is restored, the windows retain their Private Browsing status

Supported languages: English (United States), Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, Turkish.

How to Get It

Head over to the Panic Button page on the Mozilla Add-ons website, then scroll to the bottom and expand Development Channel.  Click on the yellow "Add to Firefox" button to install it.

Help and Support

Send your questions and comments to the AE Creations forums.  If you wish to report a bug, you may do so in GitHub; you will need a GitHub account if you don't have one already.
 

Delicious Post 1.5.1 released!

A minor release of Delicious Post is now available from Mozilla Add-ons and the AE Creations website.

This release addresses the recently-reported "Error adding link" error when attempting to save a web page to your Delicious bookmarks.  More details below; interested readers should also have a look at the blog posting describing this issue for some context.

If you already have an older version of Delicious Post 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 Delicious Post in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Update.

What's New

• Bug fix: "Error adding link" when attempting to post a page (issue #2)
• Bug fix: Can't overwrite a bookmark anymore (if the "Keep existing bookmark" option is unchecked in the extension preferences dialog)

Things You Should Know About

The "Error adding link" error was caused by the presence of special characters (for example, the pipe symbol ("|"), em dash ("—"), bullet ("•"), etc.) in the title or description of the bookmark that was being saved.  This error was coming from Delicious.com, which was rejecting the new bookmark because of the special characters.

While this minor release should fix the majority of cases, Delicious.com can't decode some of the special characters encoded by the Delicious Post add-on.  For example, the em dash ("—"), bullet ("•") and chevron ("»") characters would have appeared as garbage characters when viewing your bookmark containing such characters on Delicious.com.  For those known cases where this would occur, an appropriate substitute is made: for example, Delicious Post replaces the em dash with double hyphens ("--"), the bullet with a single hyphen ("-"), and the chevron with double angle brackets (">>").

Help and Support

Send you questions and comments to the AE Creations Forums, hosted on Google Groups.

"Error adding link" when using Delicious Post

Within the last few weeks, there have been reports from Delicious Post users where they are sometimes getting the error message, "Error adding link" when trying to post a link to Delicious.  I've been experiencing this problem myself when using Delicious Post.

Delicious Post uses the Delicious web API (application programmer interface) to post a web page to one's Delicious account.  Any errors from the Delicious side are simply relayed back.

It just so happens that Delicious was recently sold to another company, and these errors started happening shortly thereafter.  Coincidence?

There is a workaround to this issue: check if the bookmark title and description contains any special characters, such as the pipe symbol ("|"), em dash ("—") and chevron ("«" and "»").  Try replacing such characters with something safe, such as a comma (","), hyphen ("-"), angle brackets ("<" and ">") -- or if all else fails, the question mark ("?") is always a fallback.  Strangely enough, the error occurs when there is a single quote ("'") in either the bookmark title or description, and there isn't an easy substitute for that!

I will be preparing a fix which will require a minor release of Delicious Post.  Until then, try the workaround described above.  Thanks for your patience.

Panic Button 2.0 beta 2 released!

The second beta release of Panic Button 2.0 is now available!

This beta release is intended for early adopters who crave the latest and greatest. Users not comfortable trying out pre-release software and tolerating its inevitable bugs should stick with version 1.5.3.1 for now.

What's New in Version 2.0

This list includes the new features that were introduced in beta 1.

• Integration with the new Firefox Australis user interface
• Visual refresh of the 20 built-in Panic Button toolbar icons
• Redesigned extension preferences dialog
• Customizable shortcut key - new in beta 2
• Customize the Panic Button toolbar button icon by right-clicking on the button and then selecting the desired icon from the Select An Icon panel. Available on Firefox 29 and newer; not available on Mac OS X - new in beta 2
• Bug fix: Make it work with Private Browsing mode (issue #1)
• Bug fix: Panic Button icon is too big when toolbar button placed on browser navigation bar (issue #5) - new in beta 2
• Bug fix: On Firefox 29 (Australis), toolbar icon selection and custom caption is not saved when placed on the menu panel (issue #6) - new in beta 2

How to Get It

Head over to the Panic Button page on the Mozilla Add-ons website, then scroll to the bottom and expand Development Channel.  Click on the yellow "Add to Firefox" button to install it.

Help and Support

Send your questions and comments to the AE Creations forums.  If you wish to report a bug, you may do so in GitHub; you will need a GitHub account if you don't have one already.

Status of AE Creations extensions and Firefox 29

Firefox 29 introduces the new Australis user interface, with the aim of drastically simplifying the browser "chrome" (the menus, toolbars and navigation bar).  Some work is needed for extensions that add a toolbar button to the browser -- which means that all extensions from AE Creations are impacted.

Here is a summary of the status on compatibility with the new Australis UI that was rolled out with the release of Firefox 29.

Clippings

Version 4.1 of Clippings included compatibility with the Australis UI, among a few other things.  I've already received a complaint that it doesn't work with the Classic Theme Restorer extension, which restores the old look of Firefox.  I've added an enhancement ticket to track this request (issue #12 in the Clippings repository on GitHub), but making Clippings compatible with Classic Theme Restorer is not a priority at this time.

Panic Button

Work is in progress; a beta release was launched a few days ago.  This is a good opportunity to address some long-standing issues: specifically, outdated toolbar button icons and lack of customization of the shortcut key.  The current version of Panic Button is still usable; however, the toolbar button icon will have a fuzzy appearance if placed on the menu panel in Firefox 29, because a 32×32 pixel size of the built-in icons do not currently exist.

Send Tab URLs

Work has not yet started, but is planned.  As is the case with Panic Button, it is still usable with the new Australis UI, but again the icon's appearance when the toolbar button is placed in Firefox's menu panel is an issue for the same reason.  This is a good opportunity to fix a bug and to officially turn on support for Google Apps, since functionality with it is now confirmed.

Delicious Post

Same situation with the appearance of the extension toolbar button icon in Firefox's menu panel.  But because there are no other enhancements being planned for this extension, and since this is the extension with the least number of active users, I'm not prepared to invest much time into it.

Panic Button 2.0 beta 1 released!

Panic Button 2.0 beta 1 is now available for download!

This beta release is intended for early adopters who crave the latest and greatest. Users not comfortable trying out pre-release software and tolerating its inevitable bugs should stick with version 1.5.3.1 for now.

What's New

• Integration with the new Firefox Australis user interface
• Visual refresh of the 20 built-in Panic Button toolbar icons
• Redesigned extension preferences dialog
• Bug fix: Make it work with Private Browsing mode (issue #1)

How to Get It

Head over to the Panic Button page on the Mozilla Add-ons website, then scroll to the bottom and expand Development Channel.  Click on the yellow "Add to Firefox" button to install it.

Help and Support

Send your questions and comments to the AE Creations forums.  If you wish to report a bug, you may do so in GitHub; you will need a GitHub account if you don't have one already.

Clippings 4.1 released!

Clippings 4.1 has been released, and is now available for download from Mozilla Add-ons or the Clippings website.

What's New

• Integration with the new Firefox Australis user interface, currently in alpha testing
• The auto-incrementing placeholder reset menu now appears in the Clippings submenu of the browser textbox or message compose context menu, instead of the context menu on the Clippings icon
• Bug fix: Placeholder prompt does not appear if the placeholder name contains special characters (issue #2)
• Cosmetic improvements to the Clippings Manager user interface, especially on Mac OS X (issue #1, issue #8)
• Removed the option to export to Clippings 1.x format (issue #3)
• New extension icon for the Add-ons Manager listing

How to Get It

Clippings 4.1 is available for download from Mozilla Add-ons, or from the Clippings website.

If you already have an older version of Clippings installed, it will be upgraded for you if automatic extension updates are enabled. Otherwise, open Add-ons Manager, then right-click on the entry for Clippings in the list of installed extensions and choose Find Updates.

Users of Portable Firefox or Portable Thunderbird: Starting with Clippings 4.0/4.0.1, the default location of your clippings data source will be the Portable Firefox or Portable Thunderbird profile folder, which is usually located on your portable media (e.g. USB thumb drive). As a result of this change, the "Portable Edition" of Clippings is not needed anymore, and is no longer available.


Help and Support

Questions and comments about Clippings should be directed to the AE Creations forums, now hosted on Google Groups. 

New website and project hosting!

The new AE Creations website is now live!

aecreations.sourceforge.net

The recent and unexpected shut down of the Mozdev project hosting service was an opportunity to do a complete website redesign, moving away from the tired old look (which was really just to integrate with and slightly improve upon the default Mozdev website theme) and into something more modern -- with fresh colors, elegant fonts that are readable yet pleasing to the eye, and an improved organization of the website content.

Background

Due to the presumed shut down of Mozdev, the previous project host for the website, source code repository and bug tracking for AE Creations extensions, I've been scrambling to find a new home for them.

I've settled on using GitHub for the source code repository and bug tracking.  Originally I was going to use SourceForge (I already have an existing account for a really old project), but I like GitHub's issue tracking features which organizes issue tickets (e.g. bugs, feature enhancement requests) based on repository; by comparison, SourceForge's issue tracking functionality isn't as good as what I found with GitHub.  Since I can organize the source code for each extension in separate repositories, the bugs would naturally be organized based on extension.  So that made GitHub the best choice.  (I'm still using SourceForge to host the source code for Clippings Editor, a stand-alone utility for Clippings users who want to create and organize clippings for distribution to multiple users.)

What remained is hosting the AE Creations website.  GitHub provides project website hosting with GitHub Pages -- however, it only handles static HTML pages; server-side scripting (e.g. PHP) isn't supported.  This would make maintenance a nightmare when I have to update content that appears in multiple web pages, like page headers, footers and navigation.  But SourceForge supports PHP, handles load balancing, and has some other powerful project web hosting features, described here.  I won't necessarily be using all the available features (like MySQL databases and basic HTTP authentication), but it's great that they are available if and when I need them.

The plain, bare-bones temporary website that previously appeared under the above URL can now be found at aecreations.github.io. This will be the fallback website in case the website on SourceForge ever goes down.

What's next

There are a few minor tweaks I want to make to the website, such as implementing a nicer 16x16 pixel favicon -- but for the most part, the major work on it is done.

My focus will soon turn to updating my extensions to work with the new Australis look that will be coming soon in a future Firefox release.