Send Tab URLs 1.0 released

Send Tab URLs 1.0 has been released and is now available on Mozilla Add-ons. This version is currently in the sandbox; you need to be logged in as an AMO user to install it. Otherwise, you can download and install version 0.4.1, which is still available to all users.

What's New

• Automatically detect the title from web page content if no title appears in the browser tab
• Added support for Turkish locale

What Happened to Webmail Support?

I know lots of readers will be asking about this. In my list of stuff to do for this release, I had wanted Send Tab URLs to be able to invoke Gmail or some other web-based email client for composing the email of browser tab URLs. But I ran into Gmail errors when attempting to send the URL list to it when I wasn't logged in yet to my Google account.

This would be a great feature to have in Send Tab URLs, and I've received many requests for this. Unfortunately, I will need to do some further research into getting around this error without making it so painful for the user to use, and will therefore have to defer this feature to a later release.

Update: Send Tab URLs 1.0 is now a public release on Mozilla Add-ons. You do not need to be logged in to download and install it.

Upcoming changes to del.icio.us -- er Delicious

I'm an avid user of del.icio.us, the online social bookmarking service where you can organize your bookmarks into tags and share them with other users. It's convenient and addictive -- more so if you've got the del.icio.us browser bookmarklets and the Firefox extension installed. I've become so dependent on it for bookmarking interesting links that I rarely post to my browser bookmarks anymore. And the web-based nature of del.icio.us lets me share my bookmarks across multiple machines without the need to resort to tools like Foxmarks or Google Sync (the latter is no longer available for download).

Screen shot of my del.icio.us page, taken on 30 July 2008

Today, as I was visiting my del.icio.us bookmark page, I found a notification at the top of the page informing me that I will need to remember my login info because the permanent del.icio.us browser session, which eliminates the need to log in to that site every time I start Firefox, will expire when the "new Delicious" is rolled out in the coming weeks.

New Delicious? And with a capitalized "D" with no dots?

That piqued my curiosity enough that I had to read more about it in the del.icio.us blog. Turns out that a new version of del.icio.us has been under development for over a year. There is little mention about it, despite the claim in a post penned by the founder of del.icio.us, dated 1 February 2007, that the del.icio.us team would provide regular updates to keep users informed:

I feel that during this very exciting time for the team I’ve personally had less capacity for talking more openly to the delicious community about what’s been going on. Given that we’ve undergone a lot of changes and have a lot more in store in the future, I want to resolve to be better about communicating.
. . .

Going forward, we’re going to be talking much more about what’s changed, where the bugs are, and in general, more explicit about what we’re doing.

But over a year later, only four posts after this one made any reference to the new version of del.icio.us.

I wish I was in on the limited preview, but I doubt I'll get an invite now since I signed up so close to the launch date, which is supposed to be very soon. It would have been a good chance to see what the upgrade would be like, and to offer my feedback as a regular del.icio.us user. For now, the closest thing to a preview are these screen shots on TechCrunch.

Based on what info I could find on the upgrade, as well as what I've learned whenever a small Internet company is gobbled up by a larger corporation, I have a few concerns:

• Will the old del.icio.us URL, http://del.icio.us, co-exist with the new URL, http://delicious.com? If not, this change will most certainly break a lot of users' bookmarklets.
• Despite the takeover by Yahoo! in 2005, del.icio.us users have continued to use their own IDs, and new users can sign up without opening a Yahoo! account. Will this continue -- or will we be forced to merge our accounts with Yahoo!, similar to what happened with Flickr? Many readers will remember that the Flickr-Yahoo merge faced harsh backlash by so many loyal Flickr users.
  
• The current del.icio.us UI is fast and responsive, even on 56k dial-up. Will the upgraded del.icio.us be slow and heavy with AJAX doodads and JavaScript-driven eye candy for even the most trivial functionality?
• And while on the subject of user experience, I've always admired the simple, yet elegant, design of the del.icio.us UI, and even tried to incorporate elements of it in a prototype del.icios.us client I wrote a while back. I think this is a unique characteristic of del.icio.us that helps it to visually stand out from the millions of websites out there on the Internet -- and any move to detract from its present design would be a shame, in my opinion.
  

And finally, what's with the recent move to eliminate the dots and referring to it as Delicious?

Update: The new Delicious launched on the morning of 31 July 2008. Details in this TechChrunch blog post. The Delicious blog explains, in their announcement of the transition to the new version, why they got rid of the dots in their name, and claims that the old URL will continue to work.

Panic Button 1.0 released!

Panic Button 1.0 has been released and is now available for download from Mozilla Add-ons and the AE Creations web site.

The only change from the release candidate is a minor adjustment to one of the toolbar button icons.

A reminder to users upgrading from 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.

Panic Button is available for these languages: English (United States), Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish. A heartfelt thanks to the translation team at Babelzilla for localizing Panic Button.

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.

Send Tab URLs to-do list

The next version of Send Tab URLs will be numbered 1.0 to reflect its stability and maturity (i.e., few new features needs to be added to this extension). Here are a few items left to tackle:

• Need to handle the situation where there is no title for a web page displayed in a tab (bug 18641)
• Remove trailing space at end of web page title (bug 18663)
• Make Send Tab URLs work with Gmail or other default, web-based email clients
  

Panic Button to-do list

Here is a list of items to be completed before I release version 1.0 of Panic Button:

• Add a few more Panic Button icon choices.
• Further tweaking of the available Panic Button icons, including creation of another set of similar toolbar button images that appear when hovering over them with a mouse.
  
• [Restore Session toolbar] Get rid of the useless disabled close button on the title bar.
• [Restore Session toolbar] Automatic repositioning of the floating toolbar if switching to text and icon view, and the toolbar is at the far right of the screen. Currently, part of the floating toolbar disappears into the right edge of the screen if the toolbar layout is changed.
• Localization.
  

Currently, Panic Button is in the sandbox on Mozilla Add-ons. Once version 1.0 is released, I will nominate it to have it changed to a publicly-accessible extension. This would mean that a Mozilla Add-ons user will not have to log in to download and install it, as is the case today.

Lost messages to the Clippings mailing list

It has been brought to my attention that some emails to the Clippings mailing list haven't been getting through. After some digging around, I found that the mailing list spam filters I had set up were too restrictive, and were automatically discarding legitimate messages. I have made some adjustments to the spam filters; legitimate messages should no longer be flagged as spam.

If you tried to email a message to the Clippings mailing list in the past few weeks, and can't find your message in the list archives, try emailing your message again.

Mozilla Add-ons T-shirt

Finally, I have something to show for all the effort, the long hours and sleepless nights, the blood, sweat, tears and raw passion I put into my Firefox extensions -- a free T-shirt!

The front.

The back.

These were sent to Mozilla Add-ons developers who submitted their Firefox 3-compatible extensions early. This T-shirt arrived by UPS last week, and I now have it proudly hung on the wall by my desk at work. I haven't put on the T-shirt yet. But I consider this to be an article of memorabilia that is simply too precious to wear -- although it could use some ironing....

Yet another Panic Button beta release!

Fixes for several showstopper bugs on Mac OS X necessitated another beta release.

Meant for early adopters craving the latest and greatest, this beta release is being made available for testing, and should only be installed if you are willing to tolerate a few bugs. If that scares you, then you shouldn't install it.

» Download: Panic Button 0.9.3 (25 KB; English (United States); compatible with Firefox 2.0-3.0b5)

If you already have the previous release of Panic Button installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release.

What's New

• Improved default toolbar button icon.
• Several platform-specific bug fixes for Mac OS X and Linux. The bug fixes are detailed in the previous post.
  

Known Issues

• The Panic Button action option to hide all windows doesn't work if a system native file picker dialog box (Open, Save As) is open in any of the browser windows at the time the Panic Button action is invoked (bug 18629). This bug doesn't occur on Firefox 3.
  
• Any preferences in the extension options dialog that are set will be applied to all browser windows that are open after clicking OK, except for the option "F9 key invokes Panic Button action" -- changes to this option will take effect in new browser windows only or when exiting and restarting Firefox. (On Mac OS X, the option will be labeled "Command+F9 key invokes Panic Button action.")
  
• Customizations not being remembered between host app toolbar button changes (bug 18954)
  

Help and Support

Feedback on this extension is welcome. General comments and bug reports may be submitted by going to the AE Creations home page and clicking Contact. If you have a Bugzilla account on Mozdev, you may file a bug report here (please make sure you specify Panic Button on the bug summary field).

Panic Button fixes for Mac OS X and Linux

Ah, the joys of cross-platform development....

Several bug fixes have landed to fix a few issues found on Mac OS X and Linux. The fixes were tested on Mac OS X 10.5.1 ("Leopard") and Ubuntu 8.04 ("Hardy Heron"). For the latter, testing was performed using Gnome 2.22.1 and KDE 4.

The bug fixes, summarized below, will be included in the next beta release.

Mac OS X fixes

The extension preferences dialog (in Firefox, Tools → Add-ons, select Panic Button then click Preferences) is no longer blank (this was bug 19025).

The Restore Session toolbar is now working. Previously, the floating toolbar couldn't be moved properly, and clicking on it didn't do anything (bug 19026).

Firefox will really quit if Quit is set as the Panic Button action. And if Hide All Windows is the Panic Button action, Firefox will really quit if you clicked Exit on the Restore Session toolbar. Previously, all application windows would close, but you would still have to manually quit Firefox by choosing Firefox → Quit Firefox or pressing Command+Q (bug 19027).

The shortcut key to invoke the Panic Button action on the Mac is now Command+F9. The F9 key as used on Windows and Linux conflicts with Exposé (bug 19024).

Linux fixes

The extension preferences dialog only had a Close button; there was no way to apply changes to settings (bug 19051). This has been fixed so that it now has OK and Cancel buttons.

Panic Button beta on Mac OS X

Since I don't have a Mac machine of my own, I went to a university computer lab to test Panic Button on Mac OS X. The bugs I found are numerous; in particular, the default Panic Button action "Hide All Windows" is unusable.

Mac OS X bug list, in decreasing order of severity:

• Restore Session toolbar doesn't work (bug 19026)
• Extension preferences dialog is totally blank (bug 19025)
• F9 key conflict with Exposé (bug 19024)
• Quit action doesn't quit (bug 19027)
  

Click on the links to see the Bugzilla bug report.

Changing the Panic Button action to "Minimize All Windows" is the best workaround for now -- as well as avoiding the F9 key. Since the extension pref dialog is broken, Mac OS X users would need to change the integer pref named panicbutton.action in about:config. Use an integer value of 1 to specify the "Minimize All Windows" option.

Next, I will need to test Panic Button on a Linux box, preferably using the KDE and Gnome desktop environments. More to follow.