- This topic has 1 reply, 1 voice, and was last updated 5 years, 11 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Hi, everyone. Thank you, Shivanand Sharma, for sharing ColorfulTabs (and a number of other add-ons) with the world -- including all your work to update and maintain them 🙂 !
A long time ago now, many versions ago[1], in a window with many tabs open ... ColorfulTabs stopped restoring colors I had "manually" applied to specific tabs after I restarted, or closed &re-opened, Firefox. (At some point, it started restoring the colors again; and then after a while, it stopped again.)
To be clear about my meaning:
By "manually" applying a color to a tab, I mean doing so by right-clicking on the tab, and picking one of the four color bars at the bottom of ColorfulTabs's context menu (which is a sub-menu of the tab's context menu).My primary usage:
---
[Summary: Coloring tabs in one window as either red or green is a quick way to keep track -- including across browsing sessions -- of my progress in dealing with a set of many web pages.]
---
I primarily use ColorfulTabs in one window in particular, with about 49 tabs currently. In that window, I have nine categories (groups) of web pages, and have created one "divider" tab for each category, to separate different categories of tabs; I just load those divider tabs with a small local HTML file that contains a title, so the tab will display it, and I color the dividers yellow. All of the other tabs require periodic review as content on their pages updates; and in any given browsing session, I check pages for updated content. If I find updated content on a page, I color its tab green, and as I finish actually reviewing content on a page, I mark its tab red until the next batch of reviewing (which is generally whenever I run out of green tabs). So RED means I've done with the last update I found on a page (tab), and GREEN means I definitely still have to review that page (tab) again. ... Since ColorfulTabs stopped working, well, I've just had to live without it, still grateful for the time I had it 🙂 .My Testing:
Occasionally after ColorfulTabs stopped restoring the colors, I color a tab or some tabs again before closing the browser, just to see if functionality is magically restored. (That is how I discovered that it was, for a while.) I believe I have also tried it on a tab which is the only tab in its window as well, to see if the large number of tabs in a window was causing my problem, and I don't think that proved to be the problem. It's been a while, but I think if I had discovered that to be the problem, I'd have already split my categories into different windows.I am currently using Firefox 56.0 (32 bit) on a windows 10 machine, and ColorfulTabs 31.2.1 . But I note that both have been upgraded a number of times since the problem began. [The only other tab-related add-on I use is "Undo Closed Tabs Button"; but, then, it doesn't modify tabs at all, so I don't *think* there's any conflict there.]
Any help is appreciated. So are attempts at help 😉 .
I am also aware that since Mozilla is changing what kinds of add-ons will be allowed to function in Firefox 57 and up (57+), this ColorfulTabs is marked as a "LEGACY" app in the add-on manager. I am uncertain whether Mr. Sharma plans to convert the add-on himself or not.
For myself, I will try to help myself as well. I have many programming languages, HTML, CSS, and a bit of javascript under my belt, and I have looked at the code in some add-ons before. I have just researched creating basic add-ons and having them signed, and created an account at AMO (Mozilla Add-ons, <addons.mozilla.org> ). I am going to copy the code from the original ColorfulTabs add-on, and attempt to understand and modify it myself, particularly trying to find and fix my particular problem, and doing so in the new add-on format; I also want to explore changing or expanding the colors available in the "quick-pick" list on the context menu. Per the license at <https://www.addongenie.com/colorfultabs> ( <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/> ), editing is allowed as long as I do not distribute my derivative work, so I will not List the edited add-on or publish it privately. If I satisfy myself that my work is good, though, I *will* share the source with Mr. Sharma as the author, so that he can use or share it as he will (including not).
-- Bit (aka Cloak)
Footnotes:
[1] I would have reported this and asked for help when it first happened, but for the longest time, this forum system simply would not let me log in via Google or create an account. I just tried again -- just in case, and not expecting success -- and I was able to log in. Surprise!Update from original poster (I don't see any way to edit or update my own posts in this forum):
Well, I've learned a few things ...1) I've no idea how to convert the existing add-on to the new format, and there's a *lot* to learn before I'd be able to 🙂 . Not something I'm going to be able to just do in a night or several; I'd need to learn all about how the old style of add-in works first, in fact.
2) I have, however delved into the existing code and found that ColorfulTabs stores fixed colors for tabs in sessionstore.js . Its entries, part of other stored tab info, will look something like this:
---
"extData":{"tabClr":"238,238,238"}
---
It could also have other attributes in the "extData".3) By inspecting sessionstore.js before, during, and after running Firefox and setting tab colors in the program and altering values of the "tabClr", I have determined that -- for whatever reason -- ColorfulTabs is not storing the changed values after I have changed the color of a tab and closed the program, and it is not reading the values from sessionstore.js and implementing them when I have manually changed them in the file while Firefox is not running.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.