Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Foxmarks for Firefox 3 Beta Test: The Final Frontier

Beta testing for the Firefox 3-compatible version of Foxmarks continues to go extremely well. Last week, we sent email to all testers asking them to tell us about any problems they'd seen. We got lots of responses -- many telling us that they'd seen no problems at all. Whoo hoo!

We did learn of a few new issues, though, and have implemented fixes for those things. Yesterday, in fit of confidence we admitted into the beta test the entire remaining queue of people who had registered. (If you registered before yesterday and didn't receive an invitation, it's probably because your spam filter ate the email we sent. Head over to the beta site and you should find that you've been admitted.)

So things are looking quite good. There are, however, still a number of items that we'd like to take care of before we throw open the doors completely and call this a finished product.

  • Firefox crash: Some users have seen both intermittent and consistent crashing of Firefox during synchronization, especially initial synchronization. We believe this is caused by a bug in Firefox, and the developers at Mozilla are now investigating. If you experience this crash, please be sure to allow Firefox to submit a crash report to Mozilla.

  • Favicons getting swapped: A few users have reported seeing the wrong favicon associated with some of their bookmarks. This too seems to be a Firefox bug.

  • Cosmetic problems: There are a collection of cosmetic problems with the layout of the Settings dialog on various platforms and in certain localizations. We'll be working on these soon.

  • Unfiled Bookmarks folder: The Firefox 3 "Unfiled Bookmarks" folder is sometimes erroneously duplicated within users' bookmark sets. This, too, is something that we're looking at.


If you experience a problem that is not on this list and haven't already told us about it, please first make sure that you're running the latest version of the beta extension (currently 2.0.44.14 as of this writing but being updated frequently). If the problem persists on the current version of the extension, please drop us a line to let us know about it.

37 comments:

  1. woohoo!

    you guys are doing an awesome job. can't wait any longer! :)

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  2. I didn't send a email, thought that you had more than enough messages in your inbox without me sending one saying everything has been absolutely perfect. ;)

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  3. I'm awaiting the final release of Foxmark before upgrading to FF3... Keep up the good work guys you are awesome!

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  4. I was going to wait 'till the final release of the new foxmarks, but i cant wait, especially now that i switch to linux and they are using the firefox beta o.o

    I only hope now to receive soon the chance to try this beta XD

    Keep up the good work, this is an awesome extesion

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  5. Foxmarks rocks! All Firefox geeks should install it. I've found it while reading this article http://www.geekslot.com/2008/03/foxmarks.html

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  6. Could you open a new tab, when clicking My Foxmarks, instead to overwrite current one?

    Thanks in advance.

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  7. Any chance of making the on-demand sync a customizable key-stroke? It conflicts with the disable-styles key in the Web-Developer toolbar...

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  8. Wish if we could see a list of bookmarks with changes which require synchronization in the status icon tooltip in the future version.

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  9. @Derek: We cover the keystroke issue in our version 2 FAQ -- since it has a fairly simple workaround, we'll probably hold off on that particular enhancement for a while.

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  10. Just one question. does it uses Weaves infrastructure ? is there any possibility for this to be inter operable ?

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  11. wow , ive seen no bugs at all, very nice =] seems to respond and upload quicker , nice =]

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  12. No troubles with Firefox 3.0.b5. :-)

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  13. Couldn't you give more beta testers the chance to use foxmarks with Firefox 3? FF 3 is running more stable than FF 2. That would be really nice ;)

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  14. I'm with Basti. I'm on the beta list (signed up just after you let everyone in). Any estimates on when we can get in?

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  15. Dude, I worked on the beta for Foxmarks 2 but now I can't get in on Foxmarks 3? WTF!! Please let me in!

    Thanks

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  16. Foxmarks is fantastic ! Thanks for making this great feature available. It will make me and millions of others become Firefox loyalists !

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  17. Trevor says you should invite me into the beta - just ask Todd, he'll understand ;)

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  18. Oh guys, can`t wait for the beta. Can`t fully work with Firefox 3. If i can find another add-on, i will use it instead of yours.

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  19. Why not open the beta for everyone?
    I've already switched to firefox 3, and this extension is really really missing...

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  20. I Second!

    Derek:Any chance of making the on-demand sync a customizable key-stroke? It conflicts with the disable-styles key in the Web-Developer toolbar…

    Also the hot-key for the advanced window also conflicts with another web-developer toolbar feature.

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  21. @Kevin: You saw my response to Derek earlier, right? =)

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  22. I can't download the beta-version :(

    I push the "download"-button, but nothing happens.

    I use Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre) Gecko/2008032405 Minefield/3.0b5pre. Same problems with IE6.

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  23. I third the motion to open the beta to everyone.
    I went and signed up for the beta, but no news still..
    really really missing it.

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  24. Thanks for your great add on
    -> High CPU utilization freezing Firefox
    What about this known issue? Sync uses 100% resources and freezes Firefox while syncing.

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  25. Just upgraded a couple machines from Xubuntu v7.10 to v8.04 (64b) and OUCH... got the 3.0b of firefox... sorry but life can not go on w/o FoxMarks! Must downgrade firefox.

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  26. @Skip da shu:

    As a temporary solution, you can install the firefox-2 package from the (x)ubuntu repositories. You can always uninstall it later when you decide to switch back to Firefox 3. ^.^

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  27. @eric

    Sadly, your "workaround" for the keystroke issue does not work on Firefox 3 for Mac OS X.

    Does there really need to be a keystroke for syncing? I don't mind using the Tools menu to force a sync. At the very least there should be an option to disable the keystrokes altogether.

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  28. @Craig: You're absolutely right, we'll look into that. We actually have many people who love the sync key combination, so it's definitely going to remain an available feature. For now it seems the only available workaround is to change the key combination in Web Developer to something that doesn't conflict, but we'll see if we can come up with something better.

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  29. @eric
    Dang... looks like I'll have to stick with Firefox 2 and Google Browser Sync for the time being. Please do consider allowing user customization/disabling of keystrokes. Thank you.

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  30. @Craig: Actually, an epiphany struck and there's now a way to do this in the most recent Profiles beta. If you're interested, you can sign up at http://beta.foxmarks.com/ and then update the settings in about:config to whatever you'd prefer.

    Please email us feedback if it doesn't work for you!

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  31. About the hotkey, I just did as the FAQ says, and it did not work.

    The Noscript extension has a string key in about:config where you can set the letter you want to map to the hotkey. It doesn't require any UI.

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  32. Looks like there is something on the horizon that could solve all of my problems: http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave/.

    I really need the ability to sync cookies and passwords as well as bookmarks. Google Browser Sync hasn't been touched since 2006 and might not be updated for Firefox 3. Mozilla to the rescue.

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  33. Hello,
    My bookmarks keep disappearing. I do have foxmarks so all is not vlost but since I downloaded FF3 I seem to be having issues :(

    Any ideas as to what to do. Restarting doesn't seem to work.

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  34. I Keep loosing my bookmarks created online.
    I login at work and add/edit my bookmarks.
    I get home and I lost all the changes.
    Any suggestions

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  35. @Alex: The login cookie for my.foxmarks.com expires pretty quickly in order to prevent public terminal usage causing problems. If you login and then make an edit 30-60 minutes later, that edit won't be saved (we're still working on a way to make this clearer). Just try reloading the page before you make an edit if you've been logged in for a while, and it should work for you.

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  36. Since I upgraded to Firefox 3 my whole system is bonkers. HOw do I get rid of it? Please help me as I'm not computer savy . I'd like to go back to the one I had before as everything went smooth but I thought an upgrade to this nutty things would be better. I should've left it alone. Eileene

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