Panic Button issue with pinned web apps in Firefox for Windows

Firefox 143 introduced the ability to pin a website to the taskbar on Windows. Clicking on the taskbar button opens the website in its own web app window, which is essentially a simplified browser window. More information on this feature, which is available for Windows only, can be found in the Firefox Help site.

If you're using Panic Button, you should know that when hiding web app windows by invoking the Hide and Replace action, they will be restored as normal browser windows when clicking the Panic Button toolbar button again, or pressing the keyboard shortcut a second time.

This is a known issue and there is currently no fix. For now, change the Panic Button action to Minimize All Windows to work around it.

An issue in Panic Button affecting Tab Groups

Firefox 138, which was released this week, introduces Tab Groups, a long-overdue feature for organizing your browser tabs. For those not familiar with it, there's an article on the Mozilla Blog with details.

Panic Button currently doesn't handle tab groups when restoring your browser windows, if the Panic Button action is set to Hide and Replace. The tab groups are lost upon restore -- but the tabs themselves are intact.

I'm investigating how this can be fixed. Until then, consider changing the Panic Button action to Minimize All Windows or Minimize Current Window. These will keep your tab groups intact while offering some level of safety if a nosy coworker, roommate or spouse tries to look over your shoulder.

Clippings bug on Linux: Pasting a clipping containing placeholders doesn't work

The latest version of Clippings that was released last week introduced a regression bug where pasting a clipping containing a placeholder doesn't work. This issue is occurring on Linux only, and is being tracked in this GitHub issue.

An update to Clippings 6.5.6 with a fix for this issue is currently under review by the Firefox Add-ons editors. An announcement will be posted here when it's released.

In the meantime, Linux users can work around this issue by downgrading to version 6.5.5, which is available from the Clippings version history page on the AE Creations website. Those who are interested in trying out the update with the bug fix can install a beta release of Clippings 6.5.6.1 from GitHub.

Sync Clippings Helper doesn't work on Firefox releases packaged with Snap or Flatpak

There's a known issue affecting Firefox releases that are distributed with Ubuntu 22.04 and Fedora 40; both of these Linux distributions use Snap and Flatpak, respectively, to distribute software packages. Firefox releases that were installed via these package managers are unable to connect to Sync Clippings Helper.

A symptom of this issue is an error that appears when trying to open the Sync Clippings settings dialog from the extension preferences page:

The About dialog also shows that Sync Clippings Helper is not installed, even if it is:

To work around this issue, download Firefox for Linux from the Mozilla website and install that instead of from the default package manager in Ubuntu, Fedora or other affected Linux distributions.

Panic Button issue on macOS is fixed on Firefox 121 and 115.6 ESR

Back in August, I wrote about an issue affecting Panic Button on macOS that occurs if the Panic Button action is set to "Minimize All Windows" and the "Open a new window after all browser windows are minimized" option is selected. More details can be found in this blog post.

I finally have good news to share: this issue is now fixed in Firefox 121, which was released last week. Update Firefox to this new version to resolve this issue. Users on Firefox ESR should update to version 115.6.

If there are any questions, post to the AE Creations Help and Support forums.

Happy Holidays!

Follow-up to Firefox issue on macOS affecting Panic Button's "Minimize All Windows" action

Back in August, I wrote about an issue affecting Panic Button on macOS that occurs if the Panic Button action is set to "Minimize All Windows" and the "Open a new window after all browser windows are minimized" option is selected. More details can be found in this blog post.

Unfortunately, the most recent version of Firefox (version 117 at the time of this post) hasn't fixed the issue. I've investigated further and discovered that this issue is also occurring on Linux (confirmed on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS). The good news is that this issue is not reproducible on Windows, even with the latest Firefox release.

I've opened a bug in Mozilla's Bugzilla database. Until this is resolved, the workaround solution remains the same: users on macOS and Linux should consider turning off the option to open the temporary browser window, or change the Panic Button action to a different selection.

Firefox issue on macOS affecting Panic Button's "Minimize All Windows" action

Panic Button users on macOS should take note!

There is an issue with the "Minimize All Windows" action that occurs if the "Open a new window after all browser windows are minimized" option is selected. If this action is invoked, and then the browser window states are restored by clicking the Panic Button toolbar button or pressing the keyboard shortcut on the temporary browser window, the restored browser window heights are shrunk down.

 The shrunk-down browser windows after they are restored.

A similar issue happens when the Panic Button action is set to "Minimize Current Window."

This is confirmed to be occurring on Firefox versions 115 and 116 on macOS. This issue is not occurring on Windows.

The good news is that this issue is fixed in Firefox 117, which is due to be released at the end of August. Until then, consider turning off the option to open the temporary browser window, or change the Panic Button action to a different selection. This is understandably a bothersome inconvenience for many users -- indeed, Firefox 117 can't come soon enough!

Using Clippings With Zendesk and Other Web Apps That Use CKEditor

Zendesk has reportedly changed their HTML editor recently, and this change is causing issues for Zendesk users on Firefox who have been using the Clippings add-on to paste frequently-entered text into their customer support messages.

Symptoms that have been reported are:

• When pasting a clipping containing line breaks, the line breaks are lost and a "@" symbol is inserted in their place.
• A clipping that contains HTML tags is not pasted at all.

This issue is caused by CKEditor, which is the HTML editor that has recently been adopted by Zendesk. Users on other web sites and web apps using CKEditor will experience these problems as well.

There are workarounds available, though they are less than ideal. For example, you can copy the clipping from Clippings Manager and then paste it into the HTML editor using CTRL+V (Command+V on macOS) -- but any HTML formatting won't be applied.

More details on this issue and instructions on workarounds can be found in this Clippings help page on the AE Creations website.

Panic Button issues with restoring browser session

There is an issue with Panic Button not being able to fully restore the Firefox browser session when the Panic Button action is set to "Hide and Replace."

If there was more than one browser window open when the Panic Button action was triggered, only the first browser window will be restored when clicking the Panic Button again, and the window showing the temporary replacement web page isn't closed.

This isn't happening if there was only one browser window open at the time the Panic Button action was triggered.

This issue is confirmed to be happening in Firefox 71. Users on Firefox 68 ESR aren't affected.

If you find yourself having more than one browser window open on a regular basis, you may want to consider changing the Panic Button action to "Minimize All Windows" to work around this bug.

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.

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.

"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.

Known issues with Clippings 4.0 beta 2

A few issues have been discovered during testing of Clippings 4.0 beta 2, and are listed here.  This list will be updated as new bugs are reported.

• On Mac OS X, the extension preferences dialog is not sized properly; the bottom part of the dialog is cut off. This happens if the extension preferences dialog is invoked from Add-ons Manager.
• On Gnome, the drop-down list in the General pane of the extension preferences dialog is distorted (bug 25423)  -- Update: This issue is also occurring on Mac OS X, and Windows (if not using the "classic" desktop theme).
• In Clippings Manager, when searching for a folder using the Find Bar, the search doesn't return a match if there aren't any clippings containing the same search term (bug 25420)

What if I've found a new bug?

If you wish to report a bug, you can do so in Bugzilla; you will need a Bugzilla account if you don't have one already.  You can also post your findings to the AE Creations Help and Support forums; make sure to tag your post with "Clippings."  Make sure you check first that your bug has not already been reported.

Compatibility issues with extensions on Firefox 20

Firefox version 20 is now in beta, and some initial testing has revealed some issues with Panic Button and Send Tab URLs.  New releases of both extensions will be needed.

Clippings and Delicious Post don't appear to be affected.

Panic Button

On Firefox 20, the Panic Button toolbar button icon is not displayed.

Send Tab URLs

Firefox 20 further optimizes the loading of browser tabs by not loading their content until the user clicks on the tab.  This includes the web page title, which is used by Send Tab URLs to create the tab list.  The problem is that if the browser tab isn't loaded, Send Tab URLs is unable to retrieve the title of the web page in the browser tab; it will appear as "null" in the URL list.

Workaround to non-functional Clippings shortcut key prefix on Mac OS X

Mac users who have recently upgraded Firefox or Thunderbird to version 10 may have noticed that Control+Option+V, the shortcut key prefix for inserting a clipping using the keyboard, no longer works.

If this is happening to you, there is a workaround available:

Download and install the Keyconfig extension (also available here). After installation, look for the menu item under Tools -> Keyconfig, or open the preferences dialog for this extension from Tools -> Add-ons.

Locate the command named Insert Clipping. This is the command that is called to insert a clipping using the keyboard.

Select the existing shortcut key and change it by pressing a new shortcut key combination on your keyboard (for example, Command+Option+V), then click Apply. You can then use this shortcut key combination to paste a clipping using the keyboard.

Delicious Post bug: Simplified Chinese translation is incomplete

The Simplified Chinese (zh-CN) translation for Delicious Post is incomplete. As a result, users that are running the Simplified Chinese version of Firefox with this extension will see missing or blank text in the Delicious Post dialog boxes and menu commands.

I've requested the translator on Babelzilla to translate the missing Simplified Chinese translations. This fix will require a new release of Delicious Post. Apologies to those users who are inconvenienced.

HELP WANTED testing experimental bug fix

As described in the previous blog post, some users have reported that the Clippings Manager window would not appear when invoking it, either through the web page textbox context menu or by double-clicking the Clippings icon on the status bar. This was caused by the Clippings Manager window being positioned outside the viewable screen area.

This problem seems sporadic, as I have not been able to reproduce it. I have entered this as bug 23103.

I have uploaded a test build of Clippings which contains an experimental fix for this bug. You can download and install it by clicking here.

If you are affected by the problem described above, please install this build and let me know by replying to this Clippings forum post if the Clippings Manager display problem is resolved.

Clippings, Clippings Manager, and Firefox 4 beta

A few devoted Clippings users have been anxiously waiting for compatibility with Firefox 4 beta releases. Here is an update on that, as well as news about a recently-reported bug affecting the display of the Clippings Manager window.

Compatibility with Firefox 4 beta

There were some changes to Firefox 4 with the way XPCOM components are registered which affected Clippings. Clippings will not function as-is on Firefox 4, so this change will require a new minor release.

Clippings Manager display problems

Some users on Windows and Mac OS have reported in the forums that Clippings Manager would not appear on their screens when it is invoked, either from the web page textbox context menu or from double-clicking the Clippings icon on the status bar. If this happens to you, follow these steps to work around it:

1. In the address bar in Firefox, type about:config and press ENTER.
2. In the filter textbox, type clippings.clipmgr.window_position
3. Double-click on resulting row. In the dialog box that appears, enter 0,0 (without any spaces after the comma) and click OK.

A proper fix for this bug (Bugzilla 23103) will be included in the same release as the one to address Firefox 4 beta compatibility.

A strange Clippings bug

On Firefox 3.5, dragging and dropping selected web page text containing a single word to the Clippings status bar icon will cause the browser to start loading a URL containing that single word. Normally, when dragging and dropping any text to the status bar icon, the New Clipping dialog box should appear.

This issue isn't happening when dragging and dropping a selection containing multiple words.

To work around this, use the other options available for creating a new clipping. They are described in the Clippings Quick Start guide.

Thanks to the reporter of this bug for bringing this to my attention. Readers interested in the details can refer to bug 21223.

Clippings menu selection problems

Some users have reported that the Clippings submenu on the browser context menu would often disappear when moving the mouse to select a clipping or folder on the menu. There have even been reports of crashes occurring when this happens.

This is caused by a bug in the Video DownloadHelper extension which causes problems with many context menus in Firefox. If you have this extension installed, upgrade it to the latest version (4.0.2 at the time of this post). This will resolve the issue.