As mentioned, our latest release came out a bit ahead of schedule because we needed to fix the problem with Firefox 2.0.0.12. This meant we didn’t get to give it as much testing as we normally give to new releases. So there have been a couple of small issues that have been causing small amounts of grief.

Sporadic Problems when running under Firefox 3b3

We’ve had several reports now of sporadic freezes when Interclue is installed under Firefox 3 beta 3. We launched Interclue 1.5.2 around the same time Firefox 3b3 was released, and hadn’t done a lot of testing with it, so hadn’t seem this particular issue. It only seems to show up sporadically, and we’re not really sure Interclue is to blame, but if you unexpectedly see all the browser “chrome” lock up while the current page is still scrollable, that’s the bug we’re interested in, please email us at supportATinterclueDOTcom, or use the Interclue Feedback Reporter. We’re investigating the situation and will get back to you as soon as we’ve confirmed the real issue.

New Tutorial Doesn’t Explain Linkclue Modes Very Well

Also, we’ve noticed that in our desire to streamline the tutorial, we left out two important points about Linkclue Modes, and that has been causing a little confusion.

Firstly, the default mode for secure (https) sites is disabled , and you will need to change the Linkclue Mode using the Interclue Icon in the status bar to show Linkclues on secure sites (eg https://addons.mozilla.org).

Secondly, when the mode is”No Linkclues on Navigation Links” (gold icon), which is the default for non-secure sites, or “No Linkclues on Internal Links” (blue icon), you will often see the same yellow and blue Interclue icons appear next to the mouse cursor instead of next to the link. These special icons are not meant to be clickable, they are only there to tell you that the link in question is either a site navigation link (gold) or an internal link (blue).

“Internal” in this case means “any link on the same domain”, while “Navigation” links are Internal Links inside menues, where Linkclue Icons tend to get in the way. This is a pretty technical point, but in general it’s useful to have Linkclues on Internal links inside articles, but not on menus. So by default, Interclue is in “No Linkclues on Navigation Links” mode for non-secure sites.

This can be a bit confusing for many users, and we’re thinking about ways to streamline it and make it more intuitive in the next release.

Todays big news is the release of version 1.5.2 - it’s out a little bit sooner than we intended, and without many new features, because, as many of you will have noticed, after installing Firefox 2.0.0.12, the Interclue Options Dialog suddenly stopped working!

After getting several reports about this, Karl located the problem, created a work-around, and submitted a bugzilla report to the Firefox team. A patch for the bug was posted *5 hours* later - pretty amazing response time, but of course the patch will not have any effect until a new version of Firefox is rolled out, so users of version 2.0.0.12 are urged to update Interclue as soon as possible. Here is the bugzilla ticket if anyone is interested:

There are also a few new linkclues, a bunch of improvements to the tutorial to make it simpler and faster, and a number of small tweaks and bugfixes to improve the all-around user experience.

New Features in 1.5.2

• Linkclues for non-HTTP protocols (ftp, gopher, aim, torrent, …)
• A new Metaclue: “Show Downloadable Files” (off by default)
• Option to be notified about new beta versions

Tweaks:

• Shortened the tutorial and made it faster
• Better Facebook summaries
• Firefox 3.0 beta 2 & beta 3 compatibility
• “Turn images on in summaries” on by default
• Disabling hotkeys by default
• Rearranged Clueviewer buttons
• Added “About” link to status bar context menu
• Removed Interclue footers from summaries copied to clipboard
• More strings are now internationalized properly
• Added OnUninstall feedback page
• Removed favicon prefetching because of redirect issue
• Various minor text changes
• Cleaned up old legacy code
• Removed legacy preferences from user prefs.js file
• Tidied up a few more obscure Linkclue positioning bugs

BugFixes:

• Workaround for Firefox 2.0.0.12 preventing our options dialog from opening
• Error was thrown if Linkclue mode changed before Clueviewer was built
• Incorrect stats were shown if browser was used past midnight
• The Buttons table in the options was not correctly striped
• Incorrect message was shown when attempting to view Clues for local files
• Error if a non-HTTP protocol link was Clued a second time
• Inserting Linkclue icons sometimes caused wrapped link to wrap differently
• Linkclue cursors could cause the page to resize if link was located at right or bottom of page
• Fixed a URL decoding error which prevented the Options dialog from opening if certain URLs had user-defined
  Linkclue modes attached to them
• Added detection for incorrect character encoding if invalid meta tag found in HTML