ViewMyCurrency 0.386 (alpha) released

This release fixes many bugs and adds a welcome popup after successful install as many new users didn’t realise that ViewMyCurrency was installed or that there was a right-click menu.
Changes:

• Added: welcome popup after successful install.
• Added: Web Update starts automatically after 30 seconds, on failure it doubles the interval and then tries again
• Added: if init from preferences fails (due to user hand-editing the settings) then run setup wizard again rather than just dying horribly.
• Added: warning tooltip if install failed that includes version number to aid bug reporting.
• Fix: Choice of web-service is now stored in preferences
• Changed: If conversion cannot be performed the error is highlighted with ‘???’
• Fix: stupid bug in previous alpha that broke automatic page conversion
• Fix: bug in previous alpha that broke right-click Convert Text
• Changed: use non-breaking spaces between currency symbol and number. Thanks Simon!
• Fix: exchange rates were being lost after changing currencies (during install for example)
• Fix: Lists correctly use comma and ‘and’. This should reduce user confusion. Thanks Simon!

Please let me know if you notice any irritating problems. I’m planning to submit a new version to Mozilla Update soon if I get good feedback on this.

Enjoy!

Download from the Install page (or via automatic update)

–Will

ViewMyCurrency 0.385 (alpha) released

Bug fixes:

• Fixed: The “order” and “force space” options don’t seem to be remembered between sessions. Thanks Ludvig
• Currency: Added ‘CA$’ for CAD. Thanks Ludvig

(Note if you had already installed 0.384 and you want the updated Canadian symbols then you have to remove the Canadian Dollar from your Recognised currency list and then add it again.)

I’ll be in a cave all of Sunday but please leave feedback about this version and I’ll respond on Monday.

Thanks!

ViewMyCurrency 0.384 (alpha) released

Major changes:

• Customisable characters for thousands separator and decimal separator
• Option to force order of currency symbol and number

Changes:

• The startup wizard uses the browser locale to highlight a possible “my currency” for the user. Hopefully a nice touch for people who downloaded a localised version of Firefox.
• Option to force a space between currency symbol and number

Now you can have your Bulgarian lev, your Polish zloty or your Danish kroner formatted correctly.

Please let me know what you think. I’m planning to submit a new version to Mozilla Update soon if I get good feedback on this.

Enjoy!

Download from the Install page (or via automatic update)

–Will

ViewMyCurrency 0.382 (alpha) released

Currency: Added BGN (Bulgaria) webservice. Thanks ivancho!

ViewMyCurrency 0.381 (alpha) released

I’ve released a new version of ViewMyCurrency for testing:

ViewMyCurrency latest alpha release (from hamstersoup.com)

Important: This is not the offical release on Mozilla Update. This version will be changed regularly as bug reports come in. If you install this version then you will continue to get alpha-releases from hamstersoup.com through the auto-update feature of Firefox.

Major changes:

• Conversion into 121 currencies
• Downloads live exchange rates from Google or WebServiceX.net
• Improved Options dialog:
• Supports selection of exchange rate source
• Uses tabs to reduce clutter
• Shows currency info as well as exchange rate info
• Update rates runs automatically if new rates are added
• Added option: Remove ViewMyCurrency from statusbar

Changes:

• Support for Alpha releases (for testing before official Mozilla Update release)
• Warns about deleting old preferences
• First and last page of startup wizard improved
• Support for web services (adding a new source for exchange rates is now only a few lines of JavaScript)
• Advanced options (double-click icon in Options Dialog) (so a normal release can be used for debugging)
• Menu is now Convert to CODE or ‘OFF’ rather than confusing checkbox
• Disabled state now shown using ‘OFF’ rather than the risque ‘XXX’
• Update interval displayed in options dialog
• Added link to web service in Options Dialog. + fixed table resizing
• Links to ViewMyCurrency blog contain version number (to warn people about updates)
• Shiny new About dialog

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed ‘malformed rate’ alert
• Options dialog will open setup wizard if extension is not yet installed.
• Fixed symbols for Swedish and Danish kroner.

Premature promises

Oops. A few days ago I promised a new release within 24 hours … 5 days later and it’s nearly ready

It should be worth the wait, ViewMyCurrency will now support conversion into 121 currencies (with 16 more in the pipeline). I hope that cheers up all the people who felt left out in the first version.

It’s amazing the random things you learn working on a project like this. I never imagined that my first contributions to the Wikipedia would be about world currencies.

Speaking of random events, it seems that a few people have experienced browsers hang-ups after installing ViewMyCurrency. That totally sucks and I want to solve this. It looks like some particular combination of extensions causes a conflict. I’m still looking into it, so far the only common factor is that all the detailed bug reports I’ve received so far are from people named Peter!

A new release coming soon, I promise you!

The peril of premature preferences

I released the first version of ViewMyCurrency 6 days ago and since then there have been more than 3000 downloads and 100 comments on Mozilla update and on this blog! Great motivation to keep on programming.

There have been many requests for an option to add to or edit the currencies. I agree that would be a great feature but therein lies a peril. There are some major changes in the pipeline, for example, using different currency recognition depending on the URL to help out those poor guys who have to share the $ symbol.

These changes will inevitably result in the format of the preferences changing and if people have already invested time in customising them then they aren’t going to be happy when an automatic update comes along. Yes, I could write migration code. But not yet.

So first will come the features that don’t impact the preferences format too much. You can expect

• lots of new currencies added (especially for my Scandinavian friends)
• show/hide in statusbar
• option to select brackets for either the original currency or the converted value
• Using the URL to modify the currency recognition (probably not in the next release)
• lots of (hopefully) invisible bug-fixes

There should be a beta-version on this site within 24 hours. Keep the feedback coming!

Strange download figures from Mozilla Update

I know I should be bug fixing, but it’s much more fun to make pretty graphs so here’s a graph using the download figures from Mozilla Update for ViewMyCurrency for the last 4 days

The left axis is cumulative downloads. Week is taken from ‘Downloads this Week’ and Total is ‘Total Downloads’

The right axis shows the downloads per hour. Week’ is the differential of week, Total’ is the differential of total.

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There seems to be something fishy going on!

• The extension is still in its first week so I would expect downloads per week to equal total downloads. But as you can see, downloads per week is bigger than, and growing faster than, total downloads. At the time writing, Total Downloads: 2216 — Downloads this Week: 3041

Strange. Anybody in the know care to comment?

Bug reports – lets squish those nasty critters

A few people have reported Firefox crashes which may be to do with ViewMyCurrency.

If you have experienced a serious problem with ViewMyCurrency and you have 5 minutes to spare then I would be very grateful to receive a bug report.

Submitting a bug report
I think the best way to get all the information I need is to install another extension called Infolister.
Note there are two different versions:

• Install Infolister for Firefox 1.5
• Install Infolister for Firefox 1.0.x

Then once you’ve restarted Firefox, type about:info into the address box
Please copy and paste all of the info into an email and send it to vmc_bugs@hamstersoup.com

Bonus points if you can explain when the problem occurs. (Immediately on startup, visiting a particular website etc)

Many thanks!

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