Call Me Al

At 3:20 AM EST my browser told me I had a critical update available. Here's my experience with the upgrade to Firefox 1.0.1.

Let me start out by saying that I was running one of Moox's optimized 1.0 builds. But I wanted to see if the automatic update could handle that, so I took my chances. I use Microsoft Windows, in varying flavors, on my computers. I'm used to the way their automatic updates work. Mozilla could take a page or two from Microsoft here.

First, I should be able to download in the background. Second, there was absolutely no indication of how large a file I was downloading. Third, there was no option to download now and install later.

There was also an update to Gmail Notifier available at the same time. I had to choose between my critical update and that. Why can't I download both? Probably because Firefox doesn't understand download now and install later. I can't even tell Firefox to automatically download updates and just tell me when they're ready to be installed.

It wasn't until the update was fully downloaded that I realized it was a full download and not some little patch. I can think of a few reasons that Mozilla.org is forced to do that, at least one being that people custom-compile and that can do weird stuff on oh-so-many levels.

For the machine I use the most I downloaded Moox's build anyways. But being part of the UMO crew, I wanted to test the application update service (AUS) myself.

I've been testing and uploading themes and extensions to UMO for a few weeks now. I've probably dealt with 80 listings from bugzilla. I can only test Win32/Firefox things and that's only about half of the 200 items that were there when I started. 90% of the extensions and themes passed my testing. Don't bother posting a comment on my blog trying to elicit me into doing yours. Just file an Update:Listings bug and I'll get to it. I'm working 70-hour weeks on my regular job right now, so fiddling around with new stuff isn't high on my priority list.

Something broke my ability to use my stored passwords. I tried restoring using a known-good signons file, wiping out prefs.js, and manually cleaning out extension/theme folders for stuff I've uninstalled. By the way, uninstalling a theme does not remove the jar. I filed a bug on that. I don't particularly want to rebuild my profile from scratch.

It has been a while since I've posted about the extensions I use. As mentioned above, I use Doron's Gmail notifier. I have been TBE-free for several month and am not missing it. Ever since they implemented a single-window mode I've been happy. Of course there's always the occasional time when I'll close my browser and find I have another one open with undread tabs. The other extensions I use are Undo Close Tab, Duplicate Tab, and MiniT+ (for reordering tabs). On my laptop, I also have Tab Clicking Options so that I can double-click to close a tab. There are a few others that I use, but they're more for the fringe cases.

I released a minor update to Pinball. Some of the Help buttons are themed and I reduced some of the whitespace in the Extensions window. David James isn't very interested in maintaing it. I haven't even started looking at the changes required for Firefox 1.1. I may not even bother until I upgrade browsers and find that my favorite theme doesn't work any more.

I wish maintaing a theme was easier. I could really use an Inherits. Then I would only need to change the specific things I want and my jar would be smaller. The concept would work well for quite a few themes that differ from another by only a small amount.

I've never had a good grasp on why Mozilla.org names zip files as jar. When i was first exposed to the term jar, it was with regards to Java. At one point Java even took the default association of the file. I changed it to my zip program so that Java wouldn't complain whenever I double-clicked. I think Mozilla.org should consider changing it to zip. After all, its only a file extension, not changing the compression algorithm.

Update: I tried swapping out both signons.txt and key3.db and its still not auto-filling any more. I am able to go to the passwords panel and uncover my passwords. If I fill in the form and click Submit, it asks me if I want to save it as though it is something new.