[ext] Add-ons Manager Dialog for FF4 (no restart*)

[avatar.ds]

Hi all!
Thanks for the kind words and bug reports.
Seeing that there's almost a thousand users of this addon, I'd like to invest additional effort into it so that the most prominent bugs can get eliminated.
I uploaded a new beta on AMO and it should be available for download soon after a review.

city_zen, sterno66:
The dialog will no longer be styled by my addon. This means all standard user interface settings will apply, or the ones provided by your custome theme, which should remove the bugs you reported.

Excelsis, sterno66:
The new beta works with FF 5. I'll release another version soon that will be compatible with FF 6/7.

Hitchhiker427:
The new beta remembers dialog size and position. I guess this is probably the greatest news about it

fred_gaou:
Issue with Extension list dumper resolved!

Summary of changes:
- Resolved: Compatibility with FF 5
- Resolved: Persistence of dialog position and size
- Resolved: Compatibility with add-on 'Extension List Dumper'
- Removed: Custom visual style (should now work correctly with most themes)

[avatar.ds]

I really wanted to catch up with all your bug reports and thus hit an update spree here... Just posted the following beta 1.0b3 on AMO which corrects personas handling and add-on category selection when jumping from various buttons and links installed by Stylish, Greasemonkey, Scriptish and the like. Also tested with Firefox 6/7 and the excellent Slim Add-ons Manager extension which slims down add-on list items.

You can either wait for AMO review or download manually from the list of add-on versions at AMO here (install version 1.0b3):
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... /versions/

[fred_gaou]

"I love you", say firefox 5. but

Doesn't seem to work properly with the Firefox 5 betas nor the 7 nightlies. I have to disable/enable it everytime I restart Firefox to get it to work. [...]

the problem persists with 1.0b3 and FF5.

[Jack Black]

It works correctly here on Firefox 5.


Though, the following fix:

Handling of add-on category selection from outside Add-ons Manager (e.g. Stylish extension)

apparently conflicts with this one:

Persistence of dialog position and size

because using Stylish's "manage user scripts" link, the add-on window correctly opens up, but not on the "User Scripts" tabs like it should (instead, it displays the last selected tab).

Also, for quite the same reason, the Add-ons Manager window stays on the "Available Updates" tab (displaying "No Update Found") after you restart Firefox following an add-on update.
Normally (read: without "Add-ons Manager Dialog"), Firefox would go back to the "Extensions" tab, hiding the "Available Updates" tab again.


//EDIT: the add-ons manager apparently conflicts with Scriptish:
Step 1: you open-up the add-ons manager.
Step 2: you click on the "User Scripts" tab.
Step 3: you close the add-ons manager.
Step 4: you open up the add-ons manager again.
RESULT: the scripts are no longer displayed, replaced by the "Loading..." page, apparently indefinitely. Clicking on the different tabs doesn't work.
You have to close the add-ons manager. The next time you open it, it then falls back to the "Get add-ons" tab and everything works correctly until you repeat the previous steps again.

[avatar.ds]

"I love you", say firefox 5. but

Doesn't seem to work properly with the Firefox 5 betas nor the 7 nightlies. I have to disable/enable it everytime I restart Firefox to get it to work. [...]

the problem persists with 1.0b3 and FF5.

Are you sure it doesn't work for you at all after Firefox restart? The dialog is not opened automatically after Firefox restart, but pressing Ctrl-Shift-A or opening Addons Manager from menu 'Tools' or Firefox button works correctly for me.

[avatar.ds]

It works correctly here on Firefox 5.


Though, the following fix:

Handling of add-on category selection from outside Add-ons Manager (e.g. Stylish extension)

apparently conflicts with this one:

Persistence of dialog position and size

because using Stylish's "manage user scripts" link, the add-on window correctly opens up, but not on the "User Scripts" tabs like it should (instead, it displays the last selected tab).

Yep, I'm seeing this problem too. It worked after I fixed it but probably something other then got in its way. I'm going to fix it again soon.

Also, for quite the same reason, the Add-ons Manager window stays on the "Available Updates" tab (displaying "No Update Found") after you restart Firefox following an add-on update.
Normally (read: without "Add-ons Manager Dialog"), Firefox would go back to the "Extensions" tab, hiding the "Available Updates" tab again.

That is something outside of my scope yet. How do you enable the 'Available Updates' tab? I heard of it but never saw it in action since I believe it was planned for Firefox 4 but got axed as a release feature in the meantime.

[avatar.ds]

//EDIT: the add-ons manager apparently conflicts with Scriptish:
Step 1: you open-up the add-ons manager.
Step 2: you click on the "User Scripts" tab.
Step 3: you close the add-ons manager.
Step 4: you open up the add-ons manager again.
RESULT: the scripts are no longer displayed, replaced by the "Loading..." page, apparently indefinitely. Clicking on the different tabs doesn't work.
You have to close the add-ons manager. The next time you open it, it then falls back to the "Get add-ons" tab and everything works correctly until you repeat the previous steps again.

This is nasty. I guess it's the same issue with not being able to switch to the correct target requested from the application, leading to consequent insanity inside the Add-ons Manager. I'll check it out, thanks for reporting!

[avatar.ds]

"I love you", say firefox 5. but

Doesn't seem to work properly with the Firefox 5 betas nor the 7 nightlies. I have to disable/enable it everytime I restart Firefox to get it to work. [...]

the problem persists with 1.0b3 and FF5.

I think I know what's going in here. There's indeed a bug which I only knew about from the error console but didn't approach yet because it never affected my actual tests. It can potentially deny proper initialization of the addon though, at least partially by skipping some or all initialization code (depending on the how much Firefox needs to load at startup and the speed of the machine).

[Jack Black]

How do you enable the 'Available Updates' tab? I heard of it but never saw it in action since I believe it was planned for Firefox 4 but got axed as a release feature in the meantime.

First you have to disable automatic updates.
Then you install an older version of an add-on (for the tests, I've downloaded version 1.3.0.1 of Flashgot, while the latest stable release is v1.3.0.2) and in the add-ons manager right-click this add-on and choose "find updates". The "Available updates" tab will appear below the last one.

You can see a picture of the add-ons manager with the tab here. Note that there is also mention of the "Recent Updates" and "Search" tabs (that I didn't talk about because they're both working correctly ).

This is nasty. I guess it's the same issue with not being able to switch to the correct target requested from the application, leading to consequent insanity inside the Add-ons Manager. I'll check it out, thanks for reporting!

For the record, I also have the Stylish add-on installed and if I select the "User Styles" tab, close the add-ons manager, then open it again, everything works as intended.
For the sake of completeness, I have also tested Greasemonkey, since Scriptish is a fork of it: it also works correctly.

Seems to be a Scriptish-only conflict...

[avatar.ds]

First you have to disable automatic updates...

Thanks And I thought I knew a lot of things about Addons Manager! I really never cared to play around with manual updates, so I was under a false impression about these tabs being non-functional and hidden from the user.

Seems to be a Scriptish-only conflict...

Yes Stylish seems to work flawlessly for me, whereas Scriptish feels troublesome. However I also see Add-on Collector's complete inability to automatically switch to its tab, and I'm not sure Greasemonkey doesn't have any issues with the dialog, although I just installed it and it seems to work alright.

I have identified three separate internal vectors for these intertwined issues of displaying custom tabs which I'm investigating and trying to fix individually.

[avatar.ds]

After quite a fair bit of testing, I think the issue with custom tabs is under thorough control now. I uploaded the new version 1.04b of the addon on AMO (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-ons-manager-dialog-for-ff4/versions/). It also includes significant improvements to the way the addon initializes which should prevent possible failures under when Firefox starts with a lot of tabs and extentions.

As a bonus to the raw functionality of the dialog, I also included a new option to collapse tab titles. It is available in the menu when clicking on the "gear" button. Here a screenshot:



Summary:
- Resolved most limitations and bugs concerning automatic switching to custom tabs installed by extensions.
- Resolved most issues preventing proper addon initialization on application startup and/or under heavy stress.
- New feature: Collapse Tab Names. Persistent and available from the utlities menu-button.
- Other small fixes and internal improvements.
- Name changed to "Add-ons Manager Dialog Returns".

There are still a few smaller and fairly hidden issues but these improvements should be a major step forward. It feels satisfyingly robust in use now.

[fred_gaou]

Nice work. I'll test that.

[avatar.ds]

Nice work. I'll test that.

Thanks!

"the problem persists with 1.0b3 and FF5."

This problem should now be gone with v1.0b4. I could eventually reproduce it and it stemmed from Firefox startup performance issues which I failed to take into account initially. Being restartless, my addon gets initialized with a very high priority (in fact, before even web browser windows are created) and so it failed to stay in touch with other important stuff created inside Firefox concurrently but on a more relaxed schedule, which led to failures under high CPU load. It now properly checks against the necessary requirements before proceeding to tell Firefox to run AOM in a dialog. Give it a try.

[peter.reisio]

Yeah, so you're my hero, again.

[avatar.ds]

Yeah, so you're my hero, again.

Thanks

Still fighting one last major bug that can sometimes prevent the url bar from working in the browser (as it intercepts the 'about:addons' url). Though it's rare and goes away by disabling this addon, it is obviously a serious issue that I need to resolve before moving it beyond the experimental stage. The release will feature a host of keyboard shortcuts (starting with the obvious Escape, of course), option to use AMO homepage in Get Addons tab browser, and other improvements.