firefox

FBTracer updated to Firefox 5

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , ,

FBTracer in action

FBTracer aka Flash Tracer has been just updated to version 0.1.3 ( also thanks to Daniel D. Vanzin ) which is now compatible with the new Firefox 5.

If you already have the extension installed it’s just a matter of check updates from the addons firefox page, otherwise you can download the extension from this page: http://blog.sephiroth.it/firefox-extensions/flash-tracer-for-firebug/

Note. After a fresh install or update of the plugin, sometimes the fbtracer panel doesn’t refresh itself… in that case a firefox restart will fix the problem.

FlashTracer for Firebug

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , , , , , , ,
FBTracer in action

Recently I decided to write my old flash tracer firefox extension from scratch because I found it not really useful (at least for me) and too “expensive”, moreover when using firebug at the same time.

So I made a quick test to see how much was hard to create a new panel inside firebug to display flash tracer.
This is the result of what I did right now. It does not have all the features of the old extension, it just display the flash traces. Anyway it is actually in early stage development, updates will come during next days.
Here the instructions and the download link (remrmber to install the flashplayer debugger and firebug first!):
P.S. It has been tested on osx snow leopard and windows 7 right now.

Flash Switcher for Windows, OSX and Linux

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , , , ,

With the upcoming release of Firefox 3 I thought I had to verify my extensions to see if they work with the new Firefox version too.
For the first version of flash switcher I did two different extensions for Windows and Mac. That was a problem for maintenance.

This time I wrote the extension from scratch and I decided to make it as much as cross platform as possible. Moreover I wanted to make the installation of new plugins easier than in the previous version of flash switcher extension ( where you had to copy manually the plugin file into the extension’s directory.. ).

Thus now this extension works ( at least with my tests and people who tested it ) with Windows, OSX and Linux. Specifically it has been tested on:

  • Windows XP
  • Ubuntu linux 8.04
  • OSX Leopard and Tiger

Also the installation of new plugins now it’s easy. Just click on the installed flash plugin and click “save”. Well, I think it’s quite easy 🙂

The only issue with the new extension is that it’s quite big because it comes with 2 flash versions for every OS platform. So it’s about 14Mb.

I also did a couple of video to show how it currently works on different platforms. Currently there are 2 videos (ubuntu and osx usage).

Flash switcher Ubuntu
flash switcher osx

In order to use this extension ( if you want to try it ) you need Firefox 3.
P.S. If you want to add more flash players to the extension, download and install the version you want from the flash player archive page.
Once a new flashplayer has been installed onto your system you can save it into your flash switcher archive using the “save as” menu item of the flash switcher.

Install flash switcher

FlashTracer 2.1.0

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , , , , , , ,

Thanks to Chad Upton who sent me some suggestions on how to improve FlashTracer I recently updated this extension adding some new features beside those already installed.
Now it is possible to define rules ( using the options panel ), which allow you to style the output messages (defining font-weight, font-style, color and text underline); they can work also like a filter to discard all the messages which don’t match the rules.

Here a screenshot of the new rules panel:

I also took advantage of this update to write the extension from scratch. It was my first extension and so the code wasn’t so clear, moreover I learnt how to use xul commands and observers.
I tested this extension on Vista, Ubuntu 7.10 and OSX 10.4. Here some screenshots of the running extension on those different OS:

Note. In some case you should first remove the mm.cfg file first. In Windows and linux it is placed into the user folder, in OSX you can find it under “/Library/Application Support/Macromedia”

Install now
P.S. Remember that you need the flash player debug.

UPDATE: A new flash tracer called fbtracer has been released. This new extension is integrated into Firebug. Read more here

New Firefox search plugins!

Alessandro Crugnola firefox ,

Thanks to Ofir Shemesh here are some new Firefox search plugins for Flex developers.

  • FlexCoders archive (search Flexcodes mailing list archived at MailArchive. also hosted at http://mycroft.mozdev.org but it is not updated. they do not archive very often so it is a “so so” source for info)
  • Flexcodes @ Nabble (search Flexcodes mailing list archived at Nabble. not hosted anywhere, it is new. they are archiving every few minutes so it is the best way to search flexcoders and their browsing format is the more convenient)
  • Flex2 – LiveDocs (as it says search at Flex 2 LiveDocs. it is also hosted at http://mycroft.mozdev.org)
  • Flexcomponents @ MailArchive – search Flexcomponents mailing list archived at MailArchive – they do not archive very often so it is a “so so” source for info.
  • Flexcomponents @ Nabble – search Flexcomponents mailing list archived at Nabble – they are archiving every few minutes so it is the best way to search flexcoders and their browsing format is MUCH more convenient

P. S. Click on the search plugin title to install for your Firefox

Flash Switcher extension updated

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , ,

Yesterday I updated my previous flash switcher extension due to some changes in the latest release of Firefox 2.0.3 which caused the extension to stop working.
Moreover Adobe continues to change the path of the flash player installation dir.. because of this you should first uninstall your current flash player before using this extension.
The Flash player uninstaller is available here.

I’ve also included a brief help on how-to add more player versions available for this extension. Just open the ‘help’ menu item from the extension’s menu.

What

I’ve tested both on my Windows Vista business and Windows XP and it seems to work correctly, but feel free to report bugs to me..
Actuallt i’ve included these flash player versions:

  • 4.0 r28
  • 6.0 r79
  • 7.0 r63
  • 8.0 r24
  • 9.0 r28
  • 9.0 r45

What’s flash switcher?
Flash switcher is a Firefox extension (the icon will be installed in the right status bar of your browser) which lets you to switch between various flash player versions without using uninstallers/installers.

This new version is available only for Firefox 2.0.3 and above.

Download the Flash switcher extension.
Be sure to uninstall all previous flash switcher extensions from firefox before install this new one

FlashTracer 2 for Firefox 2.0.*

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , ,

I dont know what happened to the link of my FlashTracer extensions on Mozilla extensions page.. it simply has been removed.
It’s a while I don’t visit the mozilla developers corner and so I dont know the reason.. probably I had to update the extension for the final release of Firefox2, and they removed the link from the database..

Anyway, now the developer area is inaccessible until they release the new addons site. For this reason, for who want to download again the flashtracer extension can use this link:

http://www.sephiroth.it/firefox/flashtracer

I’ve also added my site as updateURL for this extension, so I dont have to care anymore about mozilla  changes on their site…
The extension itself has no new features, just some little changes and an help panel too. I’ve added the possibility of open the flashtracer in a floating window, as someone requested.

P.S. Remember that you can find all the Adobe Flash debug player versions here:  http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

UPDATE: A new flash tracer called fbtracer has been released. This new extension is integrated into Firebug. Read more here