ViewMyCurrency needs a little love

I recently started doing some very interesting contract work for Freebase and poor ViewMyCurrency is feeling terrible neglected. My apologies.

ViewMyCurrency was always open source but I’m planning to host the project somewhere public and encourage other developers to get involved.

Thanks for all your feedback, I hope to release a small update soon.

Who wants to test ViewMyCurrency 0.3897?

This is just a minor bug fix to yesterday’s release.

Only available here: ViewMyCurrency 0.3897

Please let me know of any problems you encounter,
Thanks!
–Will

Minor changes

• Fixed: Give Feed Back wizard for Firefox 3 failed to paste bug report into blog. Thanks Joke!
• Using new build system. (Shouldn’t make a difference, but you never know…)

Who wants to test ViewMyCurrency 0.3896?

The next version of ViewMyCurrency is ready for testers. Since this is a big rewrite, I’m asking for volunteers to test it before I push it out to everybody using automatic update.

You can only install from this link: ViewMyCurrency 0.3896

Please let me know of any problems you encounter,
Thanks!
–Will

Major changes

• ViewMyCurrency only supports Firefox 2 or the future Firefox 3
• Support for Firefox 1.5 has been removed. (Let me know if this is a problem)
• Completely removed support for Firefox 1.0
• Only converts the current tab. This is a major time saver if you have lots of open tabs. Great idea Jamie!
• Added status icon. (To avoid problems with people who forget ViewMyCurrency is running)

Minor changes

• Added support for Session Restore
• Changed: Popup convert only uses the clipboard if there is one short line in it. Thanks Chris!
• Changed: failure on startup results in a error alert rather than the startup wizard endlessly re-appearing. Thanks Theo!
• Added special exceptions to avoid converting Euro2006, Euro29 etc. Thanks Tobias!
• Avoid processing <code> and <pre> blocks of HTML. Thanks Luke!
• Added: Option to turn off rounding of numbers above 10

Currency changes

• Added non-latin symbol for Korean Won. Thanks Helge!
• Added Slovenia to the Eurozone and support for old Slovenian Tolar. Thanks xc15w0!
• Added currency symbol: $AU  Thanks Kyle
• Fixed Vietnam Dong (raised max exchange rate to 80,0000) Thanks Minh!

Internal changes

• Added: extension files are now contained in a jar file. This should improve Firefox startup time.
• (Major rewrite to fix many regressions, especially in Popup Convert)
• (Rewrote tree-walker)
• Added: ssupport for excluding sites based on URL. Currently excludes all https://, chrome:// and viewmycurrency sites. (You cannot change this using the GUI)

Javascript RegExp Unicode Character Class Tester

I’m busy working on ViewMyCurrency again and I noticed that the RegExp documentation on the Mozilla Developers Center did not say how Unicode characters were supported.

So I wrote the  Javascript RegExp Unicode Character Class Tester to make some exhaustive tests and updated the docs with my results.

And yes, there should be a new release of ViewMyCurrency coming out in the next few weeks.

ViewMyCurrency 0.3895 released with support for Firefox 2

Major changes

• Added: Support for Firefox 2

Minor Changes:

• Changed: ‘Convert Text’ toolbar is now ‘Popup convert’ with shortcut to Ctrl-Shift-P. (Ctrl-Shift-T is “undo close tab” in Firefox 2)
• Added: The symbol ‘/’ as now treated as a boundary character. Thanks Alex.
• Fixed: Could not handle COP rate from Google (failing to parse 2 300). Thanks Jair.
• Added: Support for multiple profiles. This will allow symbols like the ‘$’ to be handled differently depending on the current domain. The code is in place but not yet used so users should not notice any changes from previous versions.

Please let me know if you have any problems.

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Download from the Install page (or via automatic update)

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BarCampBrussels

I gave a talk at BarCampBrussels about my experiences of developing ViewMyCurrency.

Fixed the Norwegian bug

I think I've fixed the ViewMyCurrency install problem on the Norwegian version of Firefox.

If you were affected by this problem then please try again using the alpha-version on the install page. (I simply replaced the buggy version)

Thanks for the mention on DinSide.no and to the users who reported the bug.

For Geeks:

The Norwegian version of Firefox, v 1.5.0.2 nb-NO defaults to the following accept-languages "en-gb,en,nn". I was expecting to see something like "nn-no" (language code + country code). And in fact, since the browser is called nb-NO, shouldn't the accepted languages include "nb" for Bokmål rather than just "nn" Nynorsk?

We Now Resume Our Regular Programming…

I've been underground for a while, so my apologies if I didn't respond quickly to your feedback.

Disclaimer: Use ViewMyCurrency at your own risk

I wrote this currency converter to save me time when comparing prices online. I’m sharing it in the hope that others can benefit from it too.

Disclaimer

I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the currency conversions. Please make sure ViewMyCurrency is set to ‘OFF’ and double check the numbers before actually purchasing sometime or doing any other kind of financial work.

It’s impossible to write 100% reliable software. Even good programs have lots of bugs. The world is unlikely to end if your buggy internet browser displays the wrong font. On the other hand, if ViewMyCurrency claims that something costs 1.6 million dollars instead of 1.45 million then you might be concerned.
I want to make it very clear that bugs like this could happen, you have been warned. Use at your own risk.

If you find a bug
If you see something that doesn’t look right then please use the ‘Give Feedback’ wizard (available by right-clicking ViewMyCurrency your Firefox statusbar) to let me know. Then everybody benefits when the problem is solved.

I do my best to write good software
After these warnings, please rest assured that as someone who takes pride in my craft I do my best to write reliable software. I run automatic tests before each new release. I’d be happy to make these tests available to anybody who would like to inspect (and perhaps improve) them.

ViewMyCurrency 0.3894 New release supports the old Eurozone currencies

This release of ViewMyCurrency can now convert to and from:

• Austrian Schilling (ATS)
• Belgian Franc (BEF)
• Finish Markka (FIM)
• French Franc (FRF)
• German Deutsche Mark (DEM)
• Greek Drachma (GRD)
• Dutch Guilder (NLG)
• Irish Pound (IEP)
• Italian Lira (ITL)
• Luxembourgian Franc (LUF)
• Portuguese Escudo (PTE)
• Spanish Peseta (ESP)
• Vatican City Lira (VAL)

Major changes:

• Added: The old Eurozone currencies
• Added: All numbers above 10 are now rounded. Thanks Christian!

Changes:

• Fixed: Options dialog would hang if you removed all the currencies. Thanks Kristoffer!
• Fixed: remove highlight changes when VMC set back to ‘OFF’
• (Removed: complete currency list from user prefs since it’s not editable yet. Thanks pheloxi.)

This version is for all of those users who feel nostalgic for the Deutsche Mark or dig the retro-look of the French Franc. Let me know what you think using the ‘Give Feedback’ menu.

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Download from the Install page (or via automatic update)

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