3.0rc1 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 - 3.0Beta3 Release Notes

About Internote3rc1

The 3.0rc1 release is the first release candidate of Internote3. It includes only very minor changes since beta3.

The 3.0rc1 release is identical to the later-released 3.0.0. It is recommended that users of beta versions migrate to stable versions (3.0.0 and onwards), and all addons.mozilla.org beta channel users migrate to the main channel by installing 3.0.0, to begin receiving only stable releases.

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 Beta3 → RC1

• New localization: Hungarian
• Internote now appears on the AppMenu of Firefox 4.

Bug Fixes Beta3 → RC1

• Minor updates to localizations.

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 favorite friendly neighborhood 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 prerelease 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 prerelease 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 prerelease 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 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! •••••