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.