Interclue 1.2.3 introduces a new “presets” tab in the options dialog that allows for the rapid change of a few settings that correspond to what we think the best options are fore people with

• Fast, slow, or average reaction times
• Fast, slow, or average machines
• Fast, slow, or expensive internet connections

We would love some feedback on whether people think we got the preset values right or whether they need tweaking. And of course if you could verify we didn’t break anything by accident that would be great too.

You can download the beta by clicking here, but you will probably need to give update.interclue.com permission first.

We originally thought this release would fix a problem with the options dialog not opening under Ubuntu 7 as well, but apparently not. We’ll attempt to resolve this issue again before pushing 1.2.3 up to addons.mozilla.org and making it official.

We’ve been getting a lot of attention from foreign tech blogs.

I ran Google translations on the Interclue articles from 4 of the most highly ranked blogs that have covered us, and have posted the link and a translated fragment from each below. I haven’t edited the translations at all, so you can see that machine “translation” still has a way to go, but it’s certainly good enough to get the rough idea - they like Interclue!. Most of these are very well read blogs - we certainly got a lot of incoming traffic from them. We’re really stoked about helping people become more productive all around the world!

Zona Firefox, a Spanish Blog about Firefox

Definitively this is one of the extensions of previsualization more complete than I have seen, and although in principle their numerous options could intimidarte, you will see that it is quite easy to be accustomed to them. An indispensable extension for those who works with a great volume of information.

I come, for example, to test it on TechMeme which is a compilation of what is said on the blogosphère and not to have to activate the bonds randomly (or by guiding me only on the title) allows me to save an insane time.

The window which opens gives the statistics on the number of words, the number of bonds and even of the infos announcing if the page were already selected on del.icio.us.

On a page Google (or Yahoo, or Live) that makes it possible much more quickly to release the bonds which have nothing to do with the put question.

Superb.

Appbeta, a popular Chinese Tech Blog.

Interclue individuals that are very suitable for the now popular blog reading, Generally speaking blog will invoke emergence of a large number of links, each reading it is a very tiring thing, it can be easily confused. Another application is an important place for search engine page, where the link is key. As the title indicates : see less, know more; Click less, do more. After a short trial, I have to like Interclue, I hope you will like.

Genbeta a popular web-tech blog in Madrid

The mission of this extension is the one to facilitate and to provide
information about each one of the results of the searches so that we
pruned to determine its quality before entering these pages and acceding
to the wished information, everything in real time, of form simple and
easy to handle.

Version 1.2.1.4173 — July 13, 2007 — 377 KB

New features:

• We added a “copy to clipboard” button. There’s actually a limit on how much content we can copy into an email, but that doesn’t apply to the clipboard.
• When you do a search in any of the three major engines, search words are highlighted in the Clueview.

Tweaks

• We renamed Locked Mode to Pinned Mode. It’s still not quite the right metaphor, but at least it matches the icon now!
• When you tap the hotkey now, the clueviewer appears near the icon rather than near the mouse - particularly with things like search results, this means you don’t have to reposition the Clueviewer quite so often when moving between links in Pinned mode.
• When the clueviewer is visible you can now tap the hotkey to enter Pinned mode. The Clueviewer changes colour to green. Tap the hotkey again to close the Clueviewer.
• We reduced the size of the clue cache, and put a new setting into the performance tweaks pane to give more control over it.

Bugfixes

• Fewer pages now fail to summarize due to unexpected errors in the HTML layout.
• Some obscure and tenacious bugs that caused serious problems on only a few pages were eliminated.
• We also fixed a problem with scripted flash elements, eg - in Google analytics - thanks very much to Ionut of Google Operating System for reporting those issues. He also gave Interclue a great review, you can see it here.

Version 1.2.0.4112 — July 2, 2007 — 346 KB

All users should update as soon as possible to take advantage of the bugfixes and new features in 1.2.0 - if you are using Firefox 2.0 this update should have happened automatically, and all subsequent updates will be from the secure download site at addons.mozilla.org

New Features

• The Clueviewer now locks open if hotkey held down for more than a second, and unlocks the next time the hotkey is pressed. Definitely easier than holding the hotkey down to move through a bunch of links.
• We made some significant changes to the linkclue positioning code, eliminating all known cases where linkclues were showing up in the wrong place relative to the link.
• Changes to tutorial and options menus.
• We added “print” to the list of available clueview buttons. (feature is in beta, please let us know if it doesn’t work for you).

Change to Linkclue Mode Names

We have renamed the Linkclue modes to make it more obvious what they actually mean.

“Hotkey only for navigation links” means that content on the same site is only fetched for links that are probably articles rather than the directory or menu pages. However you can clueview these pages by holding down the Interclue hotkey (ctrl by default), so to be as transparent as possible we renamed the mode.

The arcane methods we use to detect site navigation links are now tweakable, and we have provided a shortcut item on the status bar linkclue mode menu to those rules.

By default for secure (https) pages, interclue is disabled. However most users will probably find it more useful to switch to “hotkey only for all internal links” so that content external to the site can be clueviewed.

you can change the default linkclue modes for http and https on the options screen accessed from the top item on this menu.

Bugfixes

• Removed bogus html caused by doubleclick ads.
• Eliminated all known cases where linkclue icons were appearing in the wrong place.
• Interclue no longer fetches any content if Linkclue icons not shown (this fixes the Bloglines bug)

If you are enjoying using Interclue we’d be very keen for more reviews on addons.mozilla.org - you may need to register first.

Interclue is live on addons.mozilla.org

Interclue went live to the public on a.m.o for the first time this weekend and has had over 2000 downloads from there in the first few days. That puts us into the top 10% of firefox addons by weekly download count.

Our official download/install page for Firefox is now https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4999 and future updates will also be made from that location.

Initial reviews posted by the Mozilla community during the “sandbox” review process were highly encouraging, and no doubt contributed to our download count. Here are a few we’re particularly proud of:

This one is a keeper!
by Max BBT on June 21, 2007 (rated 10)
I have to agree with the reviews below - pain free and very useful. Installed on Vista (v.1.1.1, now 1.1.2.4064). Had Cooliris before that but Interclue gives a lot more useful info as others have mentioned already, has more options and so far i have no problems, smooth. Have to add that support is excellent too - the author(-s) is responsive and a pleasure to deal with. Never thought i’d be interested in this kind of extension but suddenly i see this one as a keeper along with my everyday/version/profile standbys. Good job!

Way better than expected
by Danforth on June 20, 2007 (rated 9)
I’d tried CoolIris and uninstalled it pretty quickly, couldn’t live with it. I expected Interclue to be as awkward in its own way, but I can see where the work has gone in on the UI and added-value. Definitely a keeper. Best features: Its ability to get at the important page content so reliably from a range of sites and pages. No resources spent on hints for navigation links. Would like to see: Faster preview fetching, always. But it’s pretty good already. I’m using 1.1.2. It installed seamlessly and works fine on my Firefox 2.0.0.4/XP.

Works as advertised!
by Vyper on June 20, 2007 (rated 10)
I was using a different preview addon until I discovered this one. For what I do, I don’t need to see what a page I’m previewing looks like. I need to know it’s content. This addon does that beautifully with a bucketful of options and information you can include or exclude. If you use any preview addon, give this one a look.

Linkclue Positioning Issue in 1.1.2

We are aware of an issue regarding the placement of Linkclues on some pages in the new 1.1.2 release, and expect to have this resolved in the next version, which will be posted as an update for all existing users.

I’d love to just give you the URL, but we still haven’t made it out of the Sandbox area, so it’s a bit more complicated - you have to log in first. This is partly because we haven’t got enough user reviews yet. Apparently the glowing soundbites from reputable pundits on our news page failed to satisfy the user review requirement, because they’re really more interested in people saying things like “I’ve been using it for a couple days on Firefox 2.0.0.4 on Debian Etch on a 4ghz dual core box with a fast fibre connection at work and I haven’t noticed any significant problems. I haven’t played with all the options but the ones I did use seemed to work as advertised. Not as fast on my old pentium II at home, but it’s still usable and stable.” - or even more detail if possible. I guess that’s fair enough. They run through their own more detailed review process after seeing what people have to say, of course. I’m hoping it won’t take too long.

I’m also hoping once you’ve seen the size of the changelog blow you’ll be itching to try out 1.1.2 and willing to spend a few minutes to follow these steps:

1) Go to http://addons.mozilla.org
2) Near the top right, click “register”.
3) Fill in the registration details. It will email you a confirmation email
4) After confirming and logging in again, click on “My Account” at top right
5) Then check the checkbox that says “Show Sandbox” and hit Save.
6) You will now be able to reach the addon at this URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4999

I posted about it over at mozillazine hoping to find folks who already had a sandbox account, and they’ve kept us busy for a bit fixing up a few things that weren’t so much buggy as jarring and non-obvious. I’ll make another post here tomorrow with screenshots explaining the changes.

For now, here’s the complete changelog since 1.0.2, which is the version downloadable from this site. Hopefully it’ll be enough to interest you enough to follow the steps above and download it from the sandbox, and after using it for a bit you’ll be in a position to leave a review over there, so that the editors will be in a better position to approve it into the public area of addons.mozilla.org

========================================

1.1 - Some new features that should make power users happy.

* You can now change the font used within the clueframe on the Advanced Tab
* The “open in new tab” button will change if it’s already opened in a new tab
* There is a new “show clues for current page” status bar button
* There is a new “show clues for referrer page” status bar icon. Hover over it to see the page you can from. Click it to actually go there!
* “Suggest another Button” Link in the Buttons list
* “Suggest another Metaclue” Link in the Metaclues list
* Linkclue: Link is Open in Other Tab (click to go to that tab)
* Clueview: .mp3 player
* Clueview: Plaintext (.txt) file viewer

========================================

1.1.1 - Interface improvements, minor bugfixes.

Tweaks

* Expanded version numbering inside addon to new format major.minor.patch.checkin
* Integrated On/Off button with the Linkclue Mode Menu
* Changes to Linkclue Mode Icons
* Changes to Linkclue Cursors to match Mode icons
* Referrer page icon now requires a click to show the Clueviewer.
* Added uniqueIDs to update check so that we can count addons deployed.
* Updated privacy policy to cover uniqueIDs.
* Made the “file not found” image more distinct.
* Added 2 missing items to 1.1 changelog

Bugfixes

* Emailed url was sometimes incorrect.
* Html parser was broken on framed pages if one of the frames was broken.
* Fixed error summarizing guardian articles.

========================================

1.1.2 - Usability and cosmetic tweaks, minor bugfixes

New Features

* Clueview remains stationary whilst the hotkey is pressed.
* Nicer web 2.0 style confirm dialog for add/remove metadata blocks.
* Added edit button/menuitems to statusbar context menu
* Added edit Smartclues options to linkmodes menu
* Allow power users to tweak their Smartclues Logic settings.
* The Status Bar button preferences are now on a seperate pane in the options

Tweaks

* Various minor changes to linkclue positioning logic.
* Better error messages for invalid urls (eg “http://invalid domain name.com/”)
* add “approve” to unsafe words blacklist.
* Various text changes
* Del.icio.us title link now opens “add to my delicious” dialog.
* Got rid of the mystery space on the toolbar.
* Changed the shade of green for “Everything gets clued”
* When you click on “open in new tab” the button icon changes to the “go to that tab” icon, do indicate that if you click there you will open that tab. (Pending: An option to just go there on first click)

Bug Fixes

* fixed a bug whereby the wrong hotkey was given in the tutorial text if a user had set their own custom hotkey.
* fixed a bug where summaries for anchored links were terrible if the anchor was not found.
* fixed a bug where the Del.icio.us tagcloud fails to timeout if summary is retrieved from the cache.

Hi all,

There’s been some nice buzz about Interclue around the blogosphere and in our feedback systems - you can read some of the highlights over here. Particular thanks to Demogirl who made a screencast of Interclue in action, something I’ve been working on myself, and it’s harder than it looks!

Some more good news: Tomorrow morning (New Zealand Time, ~14hrs from now) we’ll make available the upgrade to the 1.02 release, which fixes almost all the bugs reported thus far (mercifully there haven’t been a lot of them!) - most importantly the “noscript conflict” and the “frames bug” that was causing problems with gmail and some other sites. Mucho thanks to everyone who reported bugs via our Google Group or via the built in interface - at the moment we’re happy for you to use either form of feedback, but as time goes on we’d prefer that you use the built in system for specific issues, we’ve made it very easy to submit the appropriate details.

BTW: Anyone who installs from our website from now on will get the new version.

Cheers,
Seth.

Richard MacManus, a fellow Kiwi, wrote about Interclue today on ReadWriteWeb. Richard has done an awesome job of building up a solid new media business with ReadWriteWeb, with a reputation for solid analysis of web 2.0 trends, sites and applications. His web traffic compares favourably with major NZ web portals like Stuff and Xtra - but only a small fraction of it comes from inside New Zealand. In a way, you could say he’s a major exporter!

Richard’s writeup of Interclue covered the main points well, but if you’ve got a favourite feature you’d like to mention, a site you’ve found it works really well on, or you’ve compared us with one of the Interclue competitors he mentions, why not make a comment in the relevant comment section? It’s a good reference point and one spot where a lot of people will first find out about Interclue.

I’ll blog more about the comparison between Interclue and the products he mentions later. There’s a handy reference chart in our Press Kit for anyone who’s really interested in the nitty gritty.

I’ve only been trickling out the launch announcement so far, so not a huge number of installs yet, but what people see they seem to like. Here are some random bits of buzz:

“One of the best firefox addons I’ve used”

“Just grabbed interclue. Already handy in the first five minutes.”

“A lot of online abstract summaries have huge long lists of titles, and loading up each abstract in a tab is a bummer, and this looks like the best thing we’ve ever seen in getting through lots of text summaries like an abstract compilation.”

People seem to particularly like using Interclue on Wikipedia, on news sites, and inside their intranets.

Currently it doesn’t work well on Gmail - which is a particularly elaborate online application - and we will look into that. On the other hand it does work really well on Google Reader, and many other online feed readers. It’s really nice being able to read the content and context of a link without having to leave the page. If you haven’t tried google reader yet, you really should. It’s a great way to get all your incoming news in one place. Don’t forget to add the interclue blog feed by clicking one of our feed icons to the right.

Today we’ll upload Interclue to the sandbox on addons.mozilla.org, where we hope to get a lot of valuable feedback from the early adopters in the Mozilla community.

We made a few last minute website tweaks this morning, but now we’re good to go. Looking forward to everyone’s feedback over at the Interclue forum. Visiting tech media or bloggers please see the news page.