I have made a few navigation improvements to the Toolbar Tutorial. Each chapter now has a link back to the Table of Contents, which should be useful if you land on an interior page via a search engine. The new link appears at the bottom of each chapter in the chapter navigation block.

Would having a copy of this navigation block at the top of each chapter’s page be useful? It’s a bit of a bother to have to scroll to the bottom of each chapter to find a link to the next one. If you think that would be a useful addition, let me know in the comments below.

After one billion years in development, I’m finally proud to announce that the next version of Paper Plus is now available. Barring any major bugs, this will be the final release of this program. Newer versions of Windows come with built-in wallpaper rotation mechanisms, and I’ve never verified whether or not the tool works in Vista and later. As such, the need for such a tool has diminished in recent times.

There are lots of changes in this release:

• PNG images are now supported
• Multiple wallpaper list items can now be edited at once
• Default position and timer settings are now saved on a per-list basis, instead of globally
• New option has been added to automatically remove dead items from the file list on startup
• While minimized to the system tray, a new random wallpaper can now be selected by Shift+clicking the tray icon
• Automatic random wallpaper selection at startup can now be prevented by holding the Shift key when starting Paper Plus
• The application is now limited to a single instance, to prevent file overwriting and other similar issues
• Paper Plus no longer comes bundled in an installer
• Many minor cosmetic changes
• Removed the "Apply Least Viewed" action
• Removed the option to show random pool status in color
• Bug Fix: Paper Plus no longer crashes when a password-protected screen saver kicks in
• Bug Fix: Adding files from a folder only marks a list dirty when something was actually added
• Bug Fix: Minimizing the main window will now automatically minimize the preview window as well
• Bug Fix: The initial window size for brand new installations has been reduced significantly

As always, let me know if you find any problems.

As I mentioned way back in July of 2008, most of the Windows software provided at this website would eventually be taken down. With the exception of Paper Plus, all of the applications I wrote back in the day are now long out of date.

Today, I have finally taken some action. Favorites Plus has been removed, and all associated pages have been taken down. For now, the Sims programs will stay up as they are still being accessed.

Later today I hope to post what will be the final release of Paper Plus. Once this is made public, I will be closing the door (for now) on my Windows software production. In the coming months, I will be turning to projects in other realms, which I hope to be able to share here on this site. Stay tuned … I have some fun ideas cooking!

The reviewer who approved CoLT over at the official Mozilla add-ons site pointed me to a helpful XUL element: prefwindow. This element, along with several other related ones, makes handling extension preferences super easy. Way back when I first started writing extensions (back in the Firefox 1.0 days), this mechanism wasn’t available. For some reason, it slipped by me when it was introduced in 1.5.

I may try to replace my preference-handling code in both CoLT and Googlebar Lite with this method. Doing so should simplify my code considerably, reducing the footprint of each extension in the process. Making these updates will take time, but I think the end result will be worth the time investment.

A new build of Googlebar Lite is now available. This release has a bunch of fixes and changes:

• Major code cleanup. The global JavaScript namespace is no longer polluted with all of Googlebar Lite’s variable and function names, and code has been made more efficient in some cases.
• Search terms are now cleared when exiting private browsing mode
• Bumped the maxVersion to 3.6.* to support Firefox 3.6 builds
• The hidden preference for Google’s sandbox search engine has been removed, since Google is no longer offering this sandbox to the public
• Updated the Russian (ru-RU) locale
• Updated the Chinese Traditional (zh-TW) locale
• Updated the Czech (cs-CZ) locale
• Bug Fix: The “single click in search box selects all search terms” option now uses native Firefox functionality, fixing several auto-selection problems in Linux
• Bug Fix: Dragging empty text to the search box no longer causes a blank entry to be added to the search history
• Bug Fix: Dragging text into the search box now opens a new tab if the “open search results in a new tab” and “automatically search on drag and drop” options are both set
• Bug Fix: Search terms are now cleared properly after customizing the Firefox toolbars

Since there are substantial code changes in this release, please let me know if you spot any bugs.

A new build of CoLT is now available, adding support for Firefox 3.6 builds. As always, let me know if you spot any problems.

I will be updating both CoLT and Googlebar Lite in the coming days, adding support for the new Firefox 3.6 builds. I’m also thinking about making a change for Googlebar Lite. Today, when you enter and exit private browsing mode, the Googlebar Lite search box does not clear itself (as other controls do). I’m going to look at adding this capability, probably only for the “exiting private browsing” case. If you have any suggestions or comments on this feature, feel free to comment below.

The previously promised new release of Googlebar Lite is now available. New to this release are Google Product search support (formally ‘Froogle’ search) as well as Google Finance search support.

I am placing Googlebar Lite 4.7.2 on the fast track for development. Product search will be returning to the extension, as will a new finance search option. Code cleanup will be put on hold until 4.7.3 or later. This fast track update has already been sent to the translators, so with any luck, expect (yet) another release in a week or two.

A new release of CoLT has just been posted. This release removes a stray log message that shouldn’t have been there, and cleans up the JavaScript code considerably. If you spot a problem in the new release, let me know!