Clippings NOT compatible with Thunderbird 78

Thunderbird 78 will be the next major release of this email client, and is expected to be released soon. This new version comes with major changes to extensions which requires them to be completely rewritten. Clippings for Thunderbird is affected as well.

At this time, Clippings will not be compatible with Thunderbird 78.  This may change as future versions of Thunderbird are released. Until then, Clippings for Thunderbird 5.7 will remain compatible with Thunderbird 68.x.

Clippings for Mozilla Firefox is not affected by these Thunderbird changes.

Turn Off Automatic Updates

If you're a current user of Clippings for Thunderbird, you'll need to stay on Thunderbird 68.x.  Once Thunderbird 78 is released, your Thunderbird installation may automatically update, which will cause Clippings to stop working.

To ensure continued use of Clippings, you should turn off automatic updates for Thunderbird. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Click the Thunderbird menu (☰ icon) and then select Options → Options
2. On the left navigation sidebar, click Advanced
3. Click on the Update tab, then click the radio button with the title, "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them"

Turn off automatic updates for Thunderbird in the Thunderbird options page. Click on the image to zoom in.

Note: It is safe to update Thunderbird 68 to a new minor release (for example, 68.10.0).  But you should avoid updating to version 78.0 or newer, if that is presented as an update option.

What to do if Clippings is disabled after upgrading to Thunderbird 60

Users who are upgrading to Thunderbird 60 (latest release 60.3.0 at the time of writing) will notice that Clippings is disabled after the upgrade, and updating Clippings from Add-ons Manager doesn't work.  If this happens to you, don't panic!

Clippings for Thunderbird 5.6 is the latest version that is compatible with Thunderbird 60, and it is now available.  Because of changes to add-ons in Thunderbird 60, Clippings for Thunderbird will not automatically update, and you will need to download it from the AE Creations website.  Follow the step-by-step instructions given on the installation page for Clippings to upgrade.

Your existing clippings data will be preserved even after uninstalling the old version of Clippings, and it will be automatically migrated when installing the new version.

Learn more about what's new in Clippings for Thunderbird 5.6,  as well as important things you should know about it, in the release announcement blog post. If you have more questions, post them to the AE Creations Help and Support Forums on Google Groups.

Clippings compatibility with latest Thunderbird releases

Although Firefox add-ons are now forced to switch to the newer but immature and vastly inferior WebExtensions technology to maintain compatibility with current and future versions of Firefox, legacy add-ons continue to be supported for Thunderbird.

Clippings 5.5.x remains available for Thunderbird 52.x; however, there have been issues with Clippings reported against the latest beta versions of Thunderbird -- the most recent version being 59.0 at the time of this writing.

Users should stay with the current stable release of Thunderbird in order to continue using Clippings 5.5.x. A new version of Clippings for Thunderbird is in the works, but a release schedule for this new version has not been determined.

Issues with Clippings not working on Firefox 56

Some users have reported that Clippings has stopped working on Firefox 56.  Affected users have observed that the Clippings toolbar button is unresponsive (it doesn't open Clippings Manager), and the Clippings submenu on the browser's context menu is missing.

If you are experiencing this problem, check that you have upgraded Clippings. Multi-process browser tabs is gradually being enabled to users in recent versions of Firefox, and you need to have at least Clippings 5.1.2 in order for it to function with multi-process browser tabs.

Make sure you turn on automatic add-on updates in Add-ons Manager so that you don't miss any important updates. This is especially important for the upcoming release of Clippings 6, which will support Firefox 57 and newer.  More information on Clippings 6, as well as a call for beta testers, is coming soon.

Reminder to Firefox users: Back up your clippings!

If you haven't backed up your clippings to prepare for the upgrade to Clippings 6, do it now!  Read the Clippings 6 page on the AE Creations website to learn how to prepare for the upgrade to the WebExtension version of Clippings.

Users of Clippings 5.5.x should be seeing reminders to prepare for Clippings 6 in Clippings Manager, and in the "Get Ready for Clippings 6" menu item in the Clippings context menu in Firefox.

Compatibility of AE Creations extensions with Firefox nightly builds and Firefox Developer Edition

There are upcoming new features and underlying changes to Firefox which will cause the AE Creations extensions to stop working.  If you are using the stable release of Firefox (version 42 at the time of this writing), then this won't impact you.  However, if you are using Firefox Developer Edition (formerly known as Aurora) or Firefox Beta, then you need to be aware of a few things.

Multi-process Tabs

In a nutshell, this new feature, sometimes referred to as Electrolysis or e10s, runs the web page content and the browser chrome code in separate processes.

Clippings, Panic Button, Send Tab URLs and Delicious Post will all break.  If you want to run these extensions in Firefox Beta or Firefox Developer Edition, turn off multi-process tabs. You can do this in the browser preferences page.  These extensions will be updated over the next few months to support Electrolysis, so stay tuned.

Clippings users on Thunderbird should not be impacted by this change.

JavaScript Compatibility with ECMAScript 6 (ES6)

There are changes to Firefox to make its JavaScript engine compliant with the new ES6 standard, but will cause extensions to fail unless they are updated.  Some of the code in Clippings required updating, and this was completed during development of the upcoming 5.0 release.  No updates were needed for the other AE Creations extensions.

Some users have reported that Clippings has stopped working on Firefox 44 alpha (the current Firefox Developer Edition version) because of the ES6 compatibility change that was introduced in this Firefox release.  To work around this issue, install the latest beta release of Clippings 5.0.

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.

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.

Compatibility with Firefox 6 beta

All AE Creations extensions -- Clippings (except for the special version for portable devices), Delicious Post, Panic Button and Send Tab URLs -- are now compatible with Firefox 6 beta. However, there is a minor issue with Panic Button which is noted below.

Panic Button Issue With Firefox 6 beta

If the Panic Button toolbar button is not added to any Firefox browser toolbar, and you change the toolbar button image (from Panic Button's extension preferences dialog), the toolbar button image is not updated until you add the button to a toolbar and then change the toolbar button image again. See the Bugzilla bug for more details.

[Updated] Compatibility With Firefox 5

Update: Clippings is now compatible with Thunderbird 5. Also, the portable edition of Clippings, available from the Clippings web site, is now compatible with Portable Firefox 5 and Portable Thunderbird 5.


Yesterday, Mozilla unveiled the newest version of Firefox. Firefox 5 is the first release from the new rapid release development cycle that aims to push out new releases more frequently.

All extensions from AE Creations -- Clippings, Delicious Post, Panic Button and Send Tab URLs -- are compatible with Firefox 5.

Future Firefox Releases

For now, the policy for extension compatibility with upcoming Firefox releases will remain unchanged. They will not be compatible with the nightly (Aurora) builds. Extensions will be made compatible with beta releases once they have been tested and confirmed to be working with the beta releases.

What About Thunderbird 5?

Clippings currently is not compatible with the beta release of Thunderbird 5. This will be fixed once it is tested and confirmed functional on that release.

Compatibility with Firefox 4.0 beta 7

The seventh beta of the upcoming Firefox 4 release was released yesterday (10 November 2010). Clippings, Delicious Post, Panic Button and Send Tab URLs have all been tested against this new beta release, and are now compatible with it. If you upgrade to Firefox 4.0 beta 7, no further action is needed to make these extensions work.

Missing status bar in Firefox 4.0b7

The first thing most users will notice when starting Firefox 4.0 beta 7 for the first time is that the status bar is gone. And as a result, the Clippings status bar icon is missing, and so is the Delicious Post progress icon (that cute little icon with the animation that appears when posting a URL to your Delicious account).

You can make the status bar UI for those extensions reappear by enabling the so-called Add-on Bar. To do so, choose View -> Toolbars -> Add-on Bar in the Firefox browser window. The Clippings icon and the Delicious Post status icon will appear in the same places on the Add-on Bar as they would have in the browser status bar in older versions of Firefox.

Please note that I am NOT responsible for the missing status bar in Firefox. Direct any comments about this Firefox UI change to the appropriate Mozilla forum discussion. See also this Mozilla Support forum post.

Support for Firefox 3.0 discontinued

Firefox 3.0 is no longer supported by Mozilla; therefore, compatibility with this older version of Firefox has been dropped. All AE Creations extensions now require Firefox version 3.5 or newer.

Extension compatibility with Firefox 4.0 beta 6

With the sixth beta of Firefox 4 being out for some time, it was time to make my add-ons compatible with it. Clippings, Delicious Post, Panic Button and Send Tab URLs are now compatible with Firefox 4 beta 6.

Most of these extensions only needed to have their Firefox maxVersion values bumped up to 4.0b6. However, for Clippings and Panic Button, some minor work was needed to make them work as well as address a few bugs that surfaced in this Firefox beta release.

Thanks for your patience.

AE Creations extension compatibility with Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5, the next release of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, is now available as a release candidate for users and web developers eager to preview the latest and greatest. There is something new for everyone -- like private browsing, support for geolocation, a new JavaScript engine, native audio and video support and other cool features. To learn more, check out this post from the Mozilla Blog.

Status of extension compatibility

All extensions from AE Creations -- Clippings, Panic Button, Send Tab URLs, and the newest member of the lineup, Delicious Post -- are compatible with the Firefox 3.5 release candidates, and will be compatible with the official 3.5 release when it comes out.