Clippings 5.0 beta 3 released -- testers wanted!

This is the third beta release of Clippings 5.0, intended for early adopter users who crave the latest and greatest. Users not comfortable trying out pre-release software and tolerating its inevitable bugs should stick with Clippings 4.1.2 for now.

If you already have a previous release of Clippings installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release. Because this is a beta release, no automatic upgrades to this release will be available to current Clippings users.

What's New in Beta 3

Mostly bug fixes:

• Bug fix: In Clippings Manager, handle the tree list selection change when the source URL edit is not saved (issue #44). If a clipping's source URL is being edited, and then another clipping or folder is selected without clicking OK (the button with the checkmark icon), the changes are automatically saved. The edit is discarded if the source URL is not a valid URL.
• Bug fix: Clicking Cancel in shortcut key prompt doesn't cancel (issue #48)
• Bug fix: Redo clipping creation doesn't restore source URL or color label (issue #49)
• Bug fix: Label palette doesn't appear correctly on Linux (issue #50)
• Bug fix: Error on startup in Thunderbird 44, causing the Clippings context menu to not show any clippings (issue #43)
• Removed usage of the deprecated FUEL/STEEL library
• Other minor fixes

How to Get It

Head over to the Clippings 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.

NOTE: When installing Clippings beta releases, you will get a warning saying that the extension is unsigned.  This can be safely ignored; however, unsigned extensions will be blocked in a future release of Firefox, which will cause installation of Clippings beta releases to fail.  If this happens, install Firefox Developer Edition, which allows installation of unsigned extensions for testing purposes.

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 5.0 beta 2 released -- testers wanted!

This is the second beta release of Clippings 5.0, intended for early adopter users who crave the latest and greatest. Users not comfortable trying out pre-release software and tolerating its inevitable bugs should stick with Clippings 4.1.2 for now.

If you already have a previous release of Clippings installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release. Because this is a beta release, no automatic upgrades to this release will be available to current Clippings users.

What's New in Beta 2

• You can now insert a clipping directly from the shortcut key listing dialog, if invoked from CTRL+ALT+V (or Command+Option+V on Mac OS X)
• Show or hide the details pane (with the shortcut key, label and source web page address of a clipping) in Clippings Manager. The details pane is hidden by default; to display it, select Tools → Show/Hide → Details Pane
• Improvements to icons in Clippings Manager and extension preferences dialog

See the blog posts for 5.0 beta 1, 5.0 alpha 1 and alpha 2 releases for new features and fixes introduced in those previous releases.

How to Get It

Head over to the Clippings 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.

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.

Clippings 5.0 beta 1 released -- testers wanted!

This is the first beta release of Clippings 5.0, intended for early adopter users who crave the latest and greatest. Users not comfortable trying out pre-release software and tolerating its inevitable bugs should stick with Clippings 4.1.2 for now.

If you already have a previous release of Clippings installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release. Because this is a beta release, no automatic upgrades to this release will be available to current Clippings users.

What's New in Beta 1

• New toolbar icon for Firefox and Thunderbird, new icons for the Clippings context menu, Clippings Manager, and extension preferences dialog
• Options to include source web page addresses when exporting clippings, and remove all source web page addresses from any clippings that have them
• Bug fix: label picker palette didn't display properly on Mac OS X

See the blog posts for 5.0 alpha 1 and alpha 2 releases for new features and fixes introduced in those previous releases.

How to Get It

Head over to the Clippings 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.

AE Creations website outage

The AE Creations website is currently unavailable due to a server outage on SourceForge.net, the website host.  This outage has been going on since 17 July.

In the meantime, the minimalistic fallback site, hosted on GitHub, is available for those who seek the comfort of visiting a website with the AE Creations name.  The Mozilla Add-ons pages for Clippings, Panic Button, Send Tab URLs and Delicious Post are available as well.

Updated 2015-07-22: The website is now up and running again.

Clippings 5.0 alpha 2 released!

This is the second alpha release of Clippings 5.0, intended for early adopter users who crave the latest and greatest. Users not comfortable trying out pre-release software and tolerating its inevitable bugs should stick with Clippings 4.1.2 for now.

If you already have a previous release of Clippings installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release. Because this is an alpha release, no automatic upgrades to this release will be available to current Clippings users.

What's New

This release fixes a few issues that were discovered in alpha 1, and introduces a few new features:

• A new option to paste a clipping by searching for it by name and then selecting it from an autocomplete menu.  Activate clipping search mode the same way the shortcut key paste mode is activated: press CTRL+ALT+V (or Command+Option+V on Mac OS X).  Switch between shortcut key and search-by-name modes by pressing the TAB key
• New Placeholder Bar in Clippings Manager, to make it easier for novice users to insert placeholders into a clipping.  Turn it on by clicking Tools -> Placeholder Bar in Clippings Manager
• Bug fix: Placeholder prompt dialog didn't appear when the default value of the placeholder contained spaces (issue #33)
• Bug fix: In Clippings Manager, the source URL of a clipping was blank (instead of displaying "None") when there was no source URL on the clipping

Things You Should Know About

• The clipping label picker does not display correctly on Mac OS X.
• Debugging functionality has been temporarily enabled for this alpha release.  You may notice verbose logging in the browser console and repeated beeps when editing a clipping in Clippings Manager.

How to Get It

Head over to the Clippings 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 5.0 alpha 1 - testers wanted

This is the first alpha release of Clippings 5.0, intended for early adopter users who crave the latest and greatest. Users not comfortable trying out pre-release software and tolerating its inevitable bugs should stick with Clippings 4.1.2 for now.

If you already have a previous release of Clippings installed, you must uninstall it first before installing this release. Because this is an alpha release, no automatic upgrades to this release will be available to current Clippings users.

What's New

• Clipping labels.  You can label your clippings by color
• Save the source URL (web page address) of a clipping at the time it is created.  This works when creating a clipping from text on a web page; in the New Clipping dialog, click Options and select the checkbox option "Save the URL of the source page".  Available for Firefox only
• Redesigned New Clipping dialog
• Placeholders with default values.  Example: $[placeholderName{defaultValue}].  When pasting a clipping with such a placeholder, the dialog prompt will supply a default value which you can accept or change.
• Placeholders with multiple selectable values.  Example: $[placeholderName{value1|value2|value3|...}].  When pasting a clipping with such a placeholder, the dialog prompt will display a drop-down menu where you can select from the available values.

Things You Should Know About

• The clipping label picker on Mac OS X does not display correctly.
• Debugging functionality has been temporarily enabled for this alpha release.  You may notice verbose logging in the browser console and repeated beeps when editing a clipping in Clippings Manager.

How to Get It

Head over to the Clippings 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 website issues may affect Delicious Post

Delicious is currently undergoing a data center move, but there are outstanding issues which is affecting Delicious Post.  (Delicious is owned by Science LLC, and AE Creations is not affiliated with it, nor has any involvement in the Delicious website.)

These issues may cause problems when posting links to your Delicious page.  You may receive error messages such as "error posting link" or "504 GATEWAY_TIMEOUT".

All I can say is to try posting again later.  There isn't much else I can suggest, as these errors are being relayed back from the Delicious service.

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.