A new release of CoLT is now available. Changes include:

• Changed the minimum supported Firefox version to 17.0, since the 10.x line is no longer supported
• Bumped the maxVersion to 30.*
• Various locale updates

A brand new version of CoLT has been released, implementing a couple of new features and fixing a bug or two:

• Added support for conditional expressions using the %?[] variable
• Added support for importing and exporting custom formats (useful for moving them between systems)
• Improved the way custom format events are handled
• Removed the embedded JAR file from within the extension’s XPI file
• Made a few minor improvements to the installer manifest
• Changed the minimum supported Firefox version to 10.0
• Bug Fix: Newly added separators now properly extend across the custom format dialog

The import and export functionality will make it a lot easier to migrate formats between different Firefox installs. Similarly, the new conditional expression support makes it very easy to include text in your custom formats that only appear if a particular variable has a value. I have updated the custom format documentation to discuss how to use the new conditional variable option. If you spot any problems with this release, leave a comment and I’ll address them as quickly as possible.

To me, the single most helpful feature in CoLT is the custom format. Being able to copy link text and URLs as either HTML, Markdown, or whatever else is a real time saver. That said, I think there’s still some room for improvement in what CoLT can do. Let’s take a look at an example.

Among others, I have the following two custom formats in my current Firefox profile:

• Markdown – [%T](%U)
• Markdown (Selected) – [%S](%U)

The first format copies the link text along with the link URL, while the second uses any selected text in place of the link text. Both of these options are handy to have, but I’m forced to have two custom formats for something that one ought to be able to do. I also have to remember when to use each one.

Problem 1: Conditional Formatting

I would love to be able to combine the two formats above into one rule, resulting in something like the following: [%?S|T](%U). In this theoretical example, selected text would be my first option, but if no text was selected, the link text would be used as a fallback.

Problem 2: Optional Text

One CoLT user suggested a similar scenario for including optional text in the copied value. Consider this example using a differing conditional syntax: [%T](%U)%[I (%I) ]%

Here, everything between the %[I and ]% would be optional, assuming the nested %I had no value. This would allow users to insert conditional text in formats for values that may not always appear (such as the %I option, which maps to a link’s title text). However, the suggested syntax somehow seems more ugly and error prone.

Food for Thought

As a result of these usage scenarios, here are some questions for you:

1. Is there an elegant, concise syntax that could be used for these two scenarios? I prefer the question mark-style syntax in problem 1 to indicate conditional formatting (it’s concise), but it doesn’t seem to solve problem 2.
2. Given this kind of capability, would you actually use it? I can think of a number of scenarios where it would help me, but do others see the same kind of thing?

Any and all comments on this topic would be appreciated. And if you see ways to improve what’s already present in the extension, let me know!

A new build of CoLT is now available. Here’s what’s new:

• Added a Catalan (ca) localization
• Updated the Arabic (ar) localization
• Bug Fix: Once again altered the insertafter attribute of the Copy Page Title and Location menu. It should no longer appear above the Copy menu item when text is selected.
• Bug Fix: Corrected the changes to the nsITransferable interface made in the previous version (the initial recommendation from Mozilla was incorrect)

A new build of CoLT is now available. Here’s what has changed with this release:

• Improved the use of the nsITransferable interface in preparation for upcoming private browsing changes in Firefox
• Changed the maxVersion to 25.*
• Bug Fix: Changed the insertafter attribute for the “Copy Page Title and Location” menu items, to move them higher in the context menu for Firefox 16

Why have one CoLT update when you can have two? A second release has just been pushed out, with the following minor improvements:

• Improved the way percent signs can be escaped. You can now specify either ‘%%’ or ‘\%’ to get a literal percent character.
• Added logic to clear all custom formats if the extensions.colt.prefs_version setting gets cleared in about:config. Clearing this value is a handy way to reset to the default custom formats.

A new build of CoLT is now available. Changes in this release include the following:

• Added the capability to specify access-key accelerators for custom format context menu items. Existing custom formats will have no key assigned; you must manually set them if upgrading from a previous version.
• Added the capability to insert a percent sign into a given custom format (simply escape the percent sign with a backslash character).
• Replaced the default FuseTalk custom format with the somewhat more prevalent Markdown format.

Let me know if you spot something wrong with this new build.

A new build of CoLT is now available, fixing a problem in the custom format translation routine. Links (or any other text) that included encoded characters (%BC for example) could become malformed. Version 2.5.5 corrects this issue. As always, if you see problems, let me know.

A new build of CoLT is now available, bringing the following changes along with it:

• Added Unicode support (custom formats can now include extended characters)
• Added a new custom format variable for inserting tab characters (%B)
• Options are now stored under the more appropriate “extensions.” branch
• Removed a few extraneous menu updates during initialization
• Removed the obsolete contents.rdf files from each localization folder, reducing overall file size
• Changed the minVersion from 1.5 to 3.6
• Changed the maxVersion to 15.*
• Bug Fix: Several registered event listeners were not being removed on shutdown

Let me know if you see any problems with this release.

Version 2.5.3 of CoLT has been released. This update includes a few locale updates and a maxVersion bump to 12.* to work around the annoying new Firefox release schedule.