3.0beta3 Release Notes

It would be appreciated if you took a few minutes to fill out the Internote3 prerelease survey once you have used Internote3.

Previous Version - 3.0Beta2 Release Notes

About Internote3beta3

The 3.0beta3 release fixes bugs, polishes the user interface, and cleans up the internals of beta2. It will likely be the last major beta release of Internote, which will shortly get translated.

Internote should now work on Windows, Mac and Linux. However, please note that running Internote on Linux with Firefox4 betas before beta7 will probably not display notes correctly. Linux users should stick to Firefox3.6 or earlier, or Firefox4.0beta7 or later.

New Features Beta2 → Beta3

• New localizations: French, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian
• Internote Help is now available. Localizations: Spanish, Swedish
• The note restored offscreen message now also appears for restore all.
• The restored offscreen message now giving the user the ability to click a link to go to the note.
• Manage Notes Dialog:
  • The user will now be notified when the note won't appear on any pages.
• Prefs Dialog:
  • The user will now be notified when an invalid directory has been chosen for storage.

Bug Fixes Beta2 → Beta3

• Various localization issues were fixed.
• It's now possible to use an alternative save location on Mac.
• Shift-TAB now moves backwards through the notes on Windows.
• Fixes to handle big dialogs on small screens.
• Manage Notes Dialog
  • Don't try to confirm deletion of no notes when DELETE key pressed.
  • The actions menu is no longer transparent on Firefox 4 betas.
  • Some adjustments to code determining whether a URL is valid.
  • Fixed an issue where colour names for notes wouldn't be displayed properly for notes imported from InternoteV2. (this didn't affect the notes on the page)
• The right-click menus will now work on newer Firefox4 betas.
• Notes that suddenly appear on an open page due to import or URL change in the manager will now have the Internote scrollbar if they should.
• When you click on the Internote scrollbar buttons, move off and back on again, repeating will now start again immediately.
• The about dialog and bugreport dialog will now correctly get required information in Firefox4 betas.

Interface Changes Beta2 → Beta3

• Prefs Dialog:
  • The prefs dialog has been split into two tabs.
• Manage Notes Dialog:
  • The search results button has been improved in look and now gets disabled properly.
  • Search results now has a splitter.
  • The right panel now no longer opens and closes automatically - there is now a grippy to do so manually.

About Internote3

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

It is released free of charge, and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 (General Public License) which gives you the right to use, modify and redistribute the software. See the license and your favourite friendly neighbourhood copyright lawyer for more details.

Thank you to all testers, and hopefully we can get this software ready for wider release quickly.

Please note the following before installing this software:

• Beware, mortal! This is beta-level software that has received limited testing. Given this, it's theoretically possible that it may destroy your data, as well as eat your hard drive, scare your cat so much its hair falls out, and summon space aliens from the dimension X-43 to invade the Earth.
• It may well not work at all for some configurations. If you're unable to get it working, please let me know, I'll need your help in order to fix it!
• Internote is provided free of charge. Under its license, it is provided without warranty.
• At this stage, it is not recommended that you use this software to store data that is important to you. However, if you choose to do so, standard warnings about backing up all important files apply especially to this beta version, in particular:
  • If you were an Internote2 user, please back up your old notes file, stickies.
  • Please regularly back up your Internote3 storage file, named internote-storage.xml.
• This extension has been designed for Firefox. Using it within other Mozilla or Mozilla-based software may have random results, but you are welcome to edit the install.rdf file and try.
• This extension has been tested primarily on Firefox3.6 and Firefox4.0 betas. It has received some testing on Firefox 3.0, 3.5, but some problems may be present with these versions.
• This extension definitely will not work under versions of Firefox before 3.0. This is unlikely to change as this is required for internal features that are critical to the Internote3 rewrite.
• This extension has been primarily tested on Windows. Some testing has been done for Mac and Linux - they should be operational, although some small cosmetic issues will be present. I would like to hear any experiences with other operating systems.

Reporting Bugs, Limitations, Regressions and Experiences

Please email all experiences with the beta version 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.

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 viewport.
• Various animations 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.
• Moving and resizing notes can now be aborted with the ESC key.
• Translucency is now real so notes under notes should show.
• 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. This is an XML file that should appear in your storage directory. Your old notes (in the stickies file) should be automatically imported, if present.
• Backups should also be made before every write in case of crash, and Internote should recover automatically if a crash occurs.
• There is a new Internote scrollbar which fits into the interface look & feel.
• Manage Notes Dialog Improvements:
  • You can now specify in the manager what set of pages the notes appears on, through regular expressions, URL prefixes, sites, site suffixes, etc.
  • 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 can't be available for notes created in Internote2.
• You can now right-click on notes to get a context menu.
• You can specify what set of pages the note appears on.
• Many bugfixes over Internote2.
• Vastly reduced potential for conflicts with other extensions.

Known Bugs in the Current Version

• See also next section, for additional bugs for users running versions of Firefox before 4.0beta7.
• Internote sometimes sees a randomly-occurring major failure in the underlying Firefox platform (Firefox bug #580570), that may lead to ongoing failures and a need to restart the browser. In current versions, this doesn't seem to happen anymore.
• 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

All of these bugs 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, due to Linux Firefox limitations. A future version of Internote will probably 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 Firefox4 Linux betas before 4.0beta7.
  • 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 behaviour 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.
• In Firefox 4, Internote will not appear on the Firefox button menus, and so you may have difficulty accessing the Internote menu if you have the Addon Bar and Menu Bar off on the View menu. In this case, you can use the Alt key on Windows to access the Menu Bar.
• 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! •••••