Archive for the 'Extensions' Category

A new build of Googlebar Lite is now available. Read more over at the official post.

Brand new releases of CoLT and Googlebar Lite are now available at Born Geek (and should be available eventually at the official Firefox add-ons website). These new builds add support for the new Firefox 3.0 RC1 build. The maxVersion in each has been bumped to 3.0.*, so these extensions should also be compatible with future 3.0 releases.

After a great deal of frustration with my update manifest, I’ve finally uploaded the latest builds of CoLT and Googlebar Lite. Here’s what’s new in each:

CoLT 2.4.0

• New rich-text copy option (for pasting rich text URLs) now available.
• Added support for Firefox 3.0pre (includes beta 5 support).
• Minimum version changed to 1.5. Beginning with this build, Firefox 1.0.x is no longer supported.
• CoLT now exclusively uses a chrome manifest.
• Added a new Persian (fa-IR) translation.
• Added a new Polish (pl-PL) translation.

Googlebar Lite 4.6.5

• Added support for Firefox 3.0pre (includes beta 5 support).
• Minimum version changed to 2.0. Beginning with this build, Firefox 1.x is no longer supported.
• Removed 1 unused global variable and 4 unused functions left over from older releases.
• Googlebar Lite now exclusively uses a chrome manifest.
• Bug Fix: Googlebar Lite no longer appears in certain popup windows when other chrome items are hidden.
• Bug Fix: URL anchor directives (using the # mark) no longer show up as search terms if the query string appears as the last part of the URL.
• Bug Fix: Search term buttons were not being separated correctly when a search phrase, surrounded with double quotes, was immediately followed by a search term with no space in between.
• Bug Fix: Search term highlighting is now automatically turned off when the user chooses to hide the highlighter toolbar button.
• New Czech (cs-CZ) localization.

As always, let me know if you encounter any problems. Stay tuned for a post or two addressing the frustrations I ran into. A tutorial might also appear as a result.

I hope to release the latest and greatest versions of Googlebar Lite and CoLT sometime tonight, if at all possible. As I have mentioned before, these releases will add Firefox 3.0pre compatibility, meaning that they should work in all of the Firefox 3 beta builds, as well as the current nightly builds.

A number of changes had to be made to Googlebar Lite, since it was using now deprecated API calls. Some of the new interfaces are not backwards compatible with older versions of Firefox. As a direct result, Firefox 1.x support is being dropped. This will apply to both Googlebar Lite and CoLT, so I can keep the build process consistent between the two. I will continue to offer Googlebar Lite 4.6.4 and CoLT 2.3.0, both of which support Firefox 1.x builds.

I believe I have made all of the necessary changes for both CoLT and Googlebar Lite to bring them into the Firefox 3 world. Unfortunately, the official add-ons website no longer accepts extensions with a maxVersion of 3.0.*. Therefore, in the interest of reducing the number of releases I have to make, I’m going to wait for beta 5 to be released before I release the new extensions. With any luck, beta 5 should appear in the near future, as the source tree has been frozen.

I’m in the process of getting CoLT and Googlebar Lite ready for Firefox 3. This involves making sure that I provide secure updates for my extensions. I have three choices as to how to go about doing this, and I don’t know what to do. Your input would be appreciated. Here are my options, along with the pros and cons of each:

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I have posted a new version of Googlebar Lite over at Born Geek. This release fixes one semi-critical bug and adds a new localization.