Flagfox 6.1.0 for Firefox 60+ has been released and is available for update and download from AMO. This major update brings back multiple features that were forced to be dropped during the WebExtension transition due to lack of API development by Mozilla. A year late, they’ve begun improving the API to bring back at least some dropped capabilities to addons. The two major features now reimplemented in Flagfox are: customizable hotkeys for all actions and the ability to fetch IPs from the DNS cache, as needed. Overall, Flagfox 6.1 is now more reliable and performant.
Flagfox 6.1.0 changelog:
- IPv4 & IPv6 address location database updates for July 2018
- Reimplemented support for fetching IPs from the DNS cache, instead of only requests (new WebExt API)
- Reimplemented support for customizable hotkeys for actions, instead of just one default (new WebExt API)
- Reimplemented action availability check on menu open, instead of all tab changes (new WebExt API)
- Added local caching for all favicons (uses localStorage; clears with cache clear)
- Added throttling to favicon fetching while editing an action’s template
- Reimplemented default icon loading for missing favicons in menus
- Added support for importing actions into options from prefs/actions JSON files
- Improved startup to attempt to load icons into existing tabs, where possible
- Rewrote IP/host cache, yet again (having the DNS API makes things way less complex now)
- Added support for all action types in context menus, where now possible (IPs obtainable via DNS cache)
- Changed hotkey pref save format to match new API; old ones from Flagfox 5.2.x will be imported
- Added detection and indication of invalid or existing hotkeys, when setting (not 100%, due to iffy API)
- Added ability to undo a hotkey change without having to cancel config, via escape key
- Switched to PointerEvents where applicable (only minor use)
- Improved opening of new tabs to use openerTabId; now opened next to subject, instead of end of strip
- Support for Tree Style Tabs addon (and similar) is now available again due to openerTabId change
- Shut up some pointless warning messages on startup from manifest.json load
- Various code cleanups/fixes
- Dropped support for Firefox 56-59, as Mozilla only finally added the new APIs used here in Firefox 60
Note: Firefox will ask for a permissions update for DNS, because WebExtensions are forced to re-ask for permission to do everything they used to do before. Just say yes to shut it up and allow update. I don’t even do DNS requests; just uses cache. Google/Mozilla’s permissions model here is not fantastic. I’ve already amended the Flagfox FAQ section on the topic of permissions, if you’d like a longer explanation of any of them in use in Flagfox.
I posted 3 beta test versions to this blog and managed to get a couple dozen people to test it… with zero feedback. Maybe it would’ve been a less anemic beta test if I could still use the beta channel on AMO, but Mozilla killed that in their apparent never-ending quest to make addon development more annoying. Part of the problem is also likely the plague of all software developers labeling their software as “beta” forever, teaching people that it just means “new” and not “test and report”. In any case, the only major issue I’m worried about is hotkey support on Macs, as neither I nor Richard have one and the documentation with regard to Mac keyboards and this new API is a freakin’ riddle. If someone reading this has a Mac, please test setting and the using a shortcut using the Command key, and then post a comment here telling me how it goes. (if it doesn’t work, Ctrl should trigger it instead, in which case, tell me and I can fix that)
The beta changelogs included recent changes to the default actions that were backported to the Flagfox 6.0.7 update and are thus not listed here. The main noticeable change in 6.1.0 since 6.1b3 is a fix to the detection of tab selection Firefox hotkeys on Windows (every OS uses a different modifier here, apparently). It previously let you try to set those when it shouldn’t and didn’t let you set the ones used in Linux (Mac was already handled). There’s also some code cleanups and the console debug messages have been turned off, as usual.
Just to be clear on the other Flagfox version branches: the Flagfox 5.2.x ESR update with be released later this month and Flagfox 6.0.7 was the final update for that branch. I’m not insane enough to simultaneously maintain 3 branches of an addon. There were no Firefox versions of real consequence dropped from support, so all Flagfox 6.0.x users should simply update to 6.1.x. It never is “simple”, though, as I know there are weirdos stuck on all sorts of intermediate Firefox versions because they disabled Firefox updating arbitrarily and forgot about it, but they’ll update eventually. Flagfox will at least tell them its database is stale after 3 months, as always.
Note that this post is auto-shown only on this major update, and should not be shown again (unless reinstalled). Flagfox is just a tiny little icon most of the time, so a first-run page is pretty much the only way for people to know much has changed. 🙂
