Debugging LiveClick 0.4.0.0
Catching up—finally!—on all the comments and email, it’s clear that LiveClick 0.4.0.0 isn’t quite ready for wide release just yet. We’ll run a couple more betas to address the most significant bugs with the new goal being a stable LiveClick by Firefox 4’s official release date (March maybe?). Download the latest LiveClick beta and see how you can help debug any problems below.
Download v0.4.0.0 Beta 6 (Firefox 3.5 - 4.0.*)
Fully localized in 0.4.0.0: en-US, fr, hu-HU, it-IT, ko-KR, nl, pl, zh-TW
Debugging
Starting with Beta 4, LiveClick has a special status page to see what’s going on in the background. Enter chrome://liveclick/content/status.html in your address bar to view it. The important fields to note are the “Next check time” (especially if LiveClick isn’t automatically checking Live Bookmarks for you) and “Never expiring” (which should be 0). I will likely ask you for the details on this page to help me troubleshoot your problems.
LiveClick 0.4.0.0 has a hidden preference that provides a more verbose report on the Live Bookmark update process. To activate this preference, type about:config in your address bar (assure Firefox you’ll be careful, if it prompts you). Then create a new boolean named extensions.liveclick.debug and set its value to true. The new preference will be remembered until you manually reset it via about:config.
To use the debug preference, look to Firefox’s Error Console (Tools > Error Console). When checking for new items, manually or automatically, here you’ll see LiveClick messages, e.g. which feed is being checked or if a feed has new items. The debug preference can also tell you when a Live Bookmark is due to be checked next. Right-click a Live Bookmark and you’ll find a minute counter next to the Reload command. If the number is extremely high or negative, the Live Bookmark isn’t being properly scheduled for automatic updates.
Extension Conflicts
There’s a good chance LiveClick 0.4.0.0 won’t work with other extensions that deal with Live Bookmarks, like Brief, Boox, and Reliby. The latest LiveClick uses its own Live Bookmarks checker and suppresses the native service. If another extension depends on or makes use of the original Live Bookmarks checker, LiveClick will almost certainly get in the way. This was necessary to include several features introduced in 0.4.0.0 and also to improve LiveClick’s efficiency. A future version of LiveClick will include support for managing Live Bookmarks in the sidebar.
Xmarks wants to sync when Live Bookmark item titles or positions change. I’m pretty sure this can be fixed, but I haven’t looked at Xmarks long enough to find the solution.
Toolbar Button Menu
Does anyone regularly use the Clear Live Bookmarks History command in the toolbar button (or Live Bookmarks) menu? Unless there’s a high demand for it here, the next beta might remove it. You’ll still be able to clear the Live Bookmarks History from LiveClick’s options dialog.
With the feed (subscribe) button removed from the default UI in Firefox 4, LiveClick’s toolbar button will very likely adopt its functionality. More on that soon.
0.4.0.0 Changelog:
+ Added LiveClick toolbar button for one-click checking [Details…]
* Checking for new items is less aggressive and uses fewer resources
+ Option to disable checking for new items on Firefox startup [Details…]
+ Option to disable checking for new items automatically
+ Option to suspend automatic checking until browser restart
* Automatic checking is suspended while in Private Browsing
+ Option to clear Live Bookmarks history when clearing browsing history
+ Option to style parent folders like livemarks [Details…]
+ Option to set global max Live Bookmark items per menu [Details…]
+ Option to set custom max items per Live Bookmark
* Counter more accurately accounts for hidden items
* Hide custom Live Bookmark settings by default
* Predefined choices available for custom interval times
* Interval between automatic checks is more precise
* Live Bookmark item styles are cached
* Feed states are no longer stored in database
* States of proxied feed items (e.g. FeedBurner) more accurately managed
* Status items (e.g. failed, loading) position properly and always styled
* Item previews are fetched with feed and stored in database
* Item previews no longer cut off the last word in preview
* Improved multiple window handling
+ Added LiveClick status page for troubleshooting: chrome://liveclick/content/status.html
View the original 0.4.0.0 beta thread.
Beta 3 notes:
- FIXED Live Bookmark counter incorrect if linked items are visited prior to discovery
- FIXED Check timer still initialized after immediate suspend
- FIXED Imported settings fail to update custom site locations
- FIXED Malformed context menu appears on feed button with no feeds (Fx4.0+)
- CHANGED Live bookmark item tooltip line-height decreased to 1.3em (Fx4.0+)
- CHANGED LiveClick toolbar button icon/throbber sizes decreased to 16px
- CHANGED LiveClick toolbar button throbber tweaked again (ever a work in progress)
Beta 4 notes:
- FIXED No reason to keep using Firefox’s livemark refresh rate
- FIXED Update intervals don’t default properly
- FIXED Should treat non-expiring Live Bookmarks as expired
- FIXED Automatic on/startup off should determine first check based on next expiration
- FIXED Live Bookmark items always re-styled even without state changes
- FIXED Live Bookmark item previews should complete the last word
- FIXED Live Bookmarks fail to update when GUIDs (proxies) are invalid links
- FIXED Extension version is null in about dialog (Fx4.0+)
- ADDED LiveClick status page: chrome://liveclick/content/status.html (unstyled in Fx3.5-3.6)
- CHANGED Staggered initial tasks to improve startup performance
- CHANGED LiveClick toolbar button throbber tweaked yet again
Beta 5 notes:
- FIXED Live Bookmarks not checking automatically without initial manual request
- FIXED Native service starts with each new browser window
- FIXED LiveClick toolbar button icon does not reflect suspend state on new window
Beta 6 notes:
- FIXED Some style preferences are being ignored
- FIXED Favicons shown in monitored feeds list when favicons disabled
- FIXED LiveClick alerts not working with Growl
- FIXED [Ext] Xmarks wants to sync when item titles/positions change
Known issues:
- liveclick.js script sometimes unresponsive (if you see this, please tell me what line it points to)
- Custom site locations, favicons revert when native service attempts reload
- Suspend, enter and exit Private browsing, automatic checking back on
- Checks should suspend when importing LiveClick settings
- Live Bookmark checking should timeout sooner
- “Open All in Tabs” does not recognize Live Bookmark locations
- Live Bookmarks show up as history and persist across sessions
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Posted on Jan 30 2011 at 02:24 PM
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