[Maf] MAF 0.3.0

[Christopher Ottley]

Frank Thomas wrote:

> Hi,
> I stumbled on your interesting extension, installed it at once, and 
> have a number of remaining questions.  I work with Moz 1.6 under Win 
> XP¨SP1..


Hey Frank, MAF 0.3.0 is only tested and works with Mozilla 1.7 and 
above. Firefox 0.9 and above if you're installing it on Firefox. If you 
want MAF to work you need at least Mozilla 1.7 installed. The API for 
performing certain actions changes frequently and trying to support 
lower versions makes it that much more work for me to maintain, so I cut 
off at the 1.7 API.

> Questions on saving:
> I saved a page, with no tabs.  When entering a name, do you have to 
> write the extension, too? I found no help explaining if this is 
> necessary.
> Is there an information about the successful saving?


If you don't specify an extension, it's appended automatically, 
otherwise your filename is used as typed. When you save a single page, 
an alert saying that the archive operation is complete should show up.

> When opening Tools > MAF > browse open archives: there are no entries.


Unless you open an archive it wouldn't be listed in the browse open 
archives dialog. You must explicitly open it with the File -> Open 
Archive or File -> Open File and select the archive.

> Questions on presenting your good work:
> Why is the preference setting put into the tools menu, and not put 
> where the other extensions are located? It's under Preferences where a 
> standard user as I am one would look when searching for preferences.


I'm supporting both Mozilla and Firefox with MAF. The preferences GUI is 
different in each and rather than spend time trying to integrate deeply 
into each GUI, I went with the lowest common feature. Eventually, once I 
consider MAF feature complete, I'd worry about improving the GUI hooks.

> Why is the extension hidden as a download tool?? I found it because of 
> a link by Ed Mullen on the Mozilla newsgroup. But I would have NEVER 
> looked for it in the download tools when I search a save page 
> facility. I think you unserve your  proper work in putting it in that 
> category. Maybe you could announce it at update.mozilla.org under 
> different entries? At least a hint should be given to the non-initiated.


I agree with you on this. In fact I had trouble finding it myself after 
I posted it to update.mozilla.org. The main problem is that the 
update.mozilla.org isn't easily searchable. Links to the MAF website 
appear in relevant google searches, bugzilla entries and even in the 
mozillazine (at least I think it's them) FAQ. It's not as hidden as you 
might think. I honestly can't think of a better category than Download 
tools though. There is no Save Page Tools category. Heh.

> Questions on documentation :
> I liked the screeshots and the preferences page. They give some hints 
> of how to do things. And clearly separate explicatioins for Linux from 
> those for Windows users. The best whould be to write a HowTo for 
> Dummies for the activities you want to do most often: archive, and 
> look at the pages, maybe export them? 99% of users are not developers. 
> What you might seem evident is not evident for ordinary users.


Hmmm. Don't know what to say here. I don't know what would be in the 
HowTo... Go to web page, select File -> Save page in archive, type in a 
name and press enter. To open select File -> Open Archive and select the 
archive to open. I think any problems you may have getting MAF to work 
stems from the fact you're using an unsupported version of Mozilla.

As a side note to everyone, normally around this time I would have 
available for download, a point point release of MAF (it would have been 
0.3.1), but Firefox RC1 is going to be out soon and I'm waiting for it 
before I release another version. Other than making the default 
extension *.maff when saving, if anyone has any feature requests, give 
me a buzz and I'll stick them on the queue.

Regards,
Christopher.