3.0 Release Notes

About Internote3.0

About Internote3

This rewrite of the Internote extension was created by Matthew Tuck, based on Tim Horton's Internote2, over the space of more than a year, including a thorough beta process.

It is licensed to you under the GNU GPLv2 (General Public License). This basically means you are free to use, modify and redistribute the software, but not free to deny others these rights if you redistribute it. It is also released free of charge, and as such is provided without warranty. See the license or your favorite friendly neighborhood lawyer if you need more details.

Bug Fixes Since 3.0.0

What's New in Internote3

Internally Internote3 is a complete rewrite which should be easier to fix and extend. The rewrite includes, but isn't limited to, the following:

• Notes can now be minimized (shaded) individually or en masse to the bottom of the window.
• Various animations now occur when actions are done to notes.
• Changes in one window (including the manage notes dialog) should immediately take effect in any other windows displaying the affected notes.
• You can now get a context menu for a note by right-clicking on it or equivalent.
• You can specify what set of pages the note shows on, either using the context menu or manage notes dialog.
• Moving and resizing notes can now be aborted with the ESC key.
• Note translucency (seeing through them) is now proper so notes under notes should show, not just the page underneath.
• Internote will now sometimes give helpful pop-up balloons, including when there are notes on the page that are off-screen.
• Internote now uses a new storage format for notes, named internote-storage.xml, which appears in your Firefox profile directory. Your old notes (in the stickies file) will be automatically imported, if present.
• Internote now backs up your notes storage before changing it, so it should automatically recover without data loss if your computer crashes, reboots or loses power.
• There is a new "Internote" scrollbar for overflowing notes, which fits into the interface look & feel.
• Manage Notes Dialog Improvements:
  • Actions have been redesigned to be clearer and more functional. You can now export, print, etc only selected notes.
  • Create/modification dates for notes are now displayed, though modification dates aren't available for notes created in Internote2.
• Many bugfixes over Internote2.
• Vastly reduced potential for conflicts with other extensions.

Reporting Bugs, Limitations, Regressions and Experiences

Please email all experiences with Internote to matty_is_a_geek AT fastmail DOT fm.

Please check the known bug and limitation lists (below) before reporting.

If you're submitting a bug, there is a way to quickly and easily obtain important information that can help diagnose the problem. Simply use the "Report Bug" dialog on the Internote menus.

Please provide detailed and clear explanations of bugs and limitations, as this will help me to quickly improve the product for you. If you wish to learn more about writing good bug reports that help get the problem solved, check out this page.

Of Particular Interest to Test

While I appreciate all areas of testing, and am interested in hearing about all experiences with this software, I am particularly interested in the following:

• Did you attempt to import notes from the old stickies format? Did it work? Did you try the manual import in Manage Notes dialog, or did they automatically import by being in your profile directory?
• Other than the bugs mentioned below, do your notes ever go to incorrect positions more than momentarily? In particular, does maximizing, minimizing and dragging the window partially off-screen work satisfactorily?
• Other than the limitations mentioned below, are there any features missing that were in Internote2? Or are any features not working as well?
• Do you receive a message when you load a page with off-viewport notes? Is it useful? Annoying?
• Do the animations work well on your computer? The frame rate should automatically reduce for slower computers, eliminating the need for an animations off preference. Do you find them annoying?
• Have you found any situations where you could drag notes onto the page's scrollbars, or couldn't drag them onto the bottom or right of the viewport? Please record any such URLs.

Known Bugs in the Current Version

• See also next section, for additional bugs for users running versions of Firefox before 4.0beta7.
• Zoom bugs:
  • Upon changing the zoom factor, no attempt is made to adjust the position or size of notes.
  • May throw off other things, such as the off-screen note message and scrollbar detection.
• The initial order of URLs and notes in the Manage Notes dialog will start sorted, but this won't be maintained.
• When the cursor is moved outside of the note's text area using the cursor keys or PageUp/Down keys, or the selection is dragged below the note, the text area will not scroll properly.

Known Display Bugs for Versions of Firefox before 4.0beta7

These Internote bugs are all due to bugs or limitations in Firefox. They will not occur for users of Firefox 4.0beta7 or later.

• Linux:
  • Note translucency will not work, regardless of the preference to turn it on. A future version of Internote may reintroduce the old "fake translucency" feature for Linux.
  • Due to the absence of translucency, the fade in/out animations present on the other operating systems will not work on Linux.
  • Notes will probably fail to display on Firefox 4.0 betas before beta7. This does not affect Firefox 3.6 or earlier.
  • Flip animations used to choose new colors are jerky.
• Windows/Mac: Due to unfortunate limitations in Firefox3 and onwards, the following minor and usually brief cosmetic issues may be present. It is unlikely that many such issues will be fixed in the near future:
  • When the window is against the right-hand side of the screen, a small amount of a note may be cut off if it is against the right-hand side of the window, in the absence of a window scrollbar. This is due to an unfortunate workaround for a more serious issue.
  • When moving or scrolling the window, note positions may lag behind the window slightly.
  • When resizing the window, notes may appear improperly truncated for a short time.
  • When the window is moved offscreen, the notes may temporarily jump to an inappropriate position.
  • Notes may sometimes flicker, including when the delete confirmation dialog appears.
  • During continuous scrolling note positions may not always update until scrolling stops.
  • When the window straddles multiple monitors, unanticipated behavior may result.
  • When the browser window is partially off the screen of a second monitor, the notes may be misplaced.
  • When the first note appears on a page in a window in the background, the window jumps to the front. This is uncommon, but can happen due to having the same page open in two windows or having the page open while changing URL settings in the Manage Notes dialog.
• Mac: Due to more unfortunate limitations, these additional display issues will occur:
  • Scrolling when notes are overlapping may result briefly in the wrong note being on top.
  • Clicking on a note in a separate window may not correctly focus the new window.

Known Limitations in the Current Version

• Some localizations present in V2 are not yet present in V3.
• The Report Bug dialog cannot yet automatically send a bug report, they must currently be emailed.
• Due a new system where Manage Notes dialog changes take effect immediately on other windows, it is no longer possible to cancel these changes. It is anticipated that a future version after the first stable release will include an undo system that will provide a more general and useful option.

••••• That's all folks! •••••