OPIE - offers up some of addons

[seasalt]

Hello Chuck

I just discovered this fantastic new addon you created. OPIE. so very wonderful.
I am having to most likely do a Fx profile create from scratch, as something in my browse/dl history in places.sqlite is corrupt. (I have replicated issue and now trying to resolve before at last resort recreate profile). So your addon, is very helpful.

some questions re: OPIE

1) Is there a way to link it into FEBE addon - automatic prompt backup, so I can schedule backup of add on preferences? I would likely set the backup more frequent on certain addons e.g. CTR

2) The OPIE export preference settings, shows me how many after I click export e.g. 17 exported. Would be nice if I could see how many in the list before export.

3) I have 40 addons, OPIE backed up 17. So I looked at what the others were.
> 9 have preference settings and these were not offered in OPIE list to export
> 15 have no preference settings
(this took me a few hours to go thru, so be nice if somehow on the addon manager list, we could see which OPIE will take and which it will not)

4) I have posted another question in FEBE forum. When I used the FEBE tool/verify addons, it told me I have another 20 odd addons in addon manager but... . I dont use all these that FEBE tool red flagged but something is not working as intended if FEBE found them. I thought I had deleted them correctly. obviously not. Is there is way we delete these easily, so FEBE tool, Addon verify does not give me red warning.


Not sure if it is helpful to know what these 9 are. here they are just in case
The 9 Addons that OPIE did not offer up, some has other means to backup, and some do not (for these I have screenshot the preference pages)
e.g.
1 Session Manager (offer export of preferences within addon)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... er/?src=ss
2 Cookie Controller
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... er/?src=ss
3 Adblock Plus
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... us/?src=ss

4 Extended Status Bar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ar/?src=ss
5 Download status bar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... ar/?src=ss
6 Location Bar enhancer
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... er/?src=ss

7 Addon Form2
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... -2/?src=ss
8 Addon Form
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... er/?src=ss
9Distill Web Monitor
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... src=search

[seasalt]

Also,

I noticed this afternoon, when I went and completed another export of preferences. After I did my final tweaks.

The date created is the same as this morning. So i am not comfortable it worked e.g. i have fresh exports of preferences.

I have the preference settings in OPIE of
single files
overwrite files

I received the confirmation message, 20 files created.

any ideas?

thankyou

[seasalt]

and...

I logged this issue basedon fEBE backup results today. Was essentially told to ignore it. But as a lay person, I went to action it as FEBE was telling me something is not backed up. I would not know if it is critical or not. Just if it is up to date or not e.g. v38 and I am on v45.

So action for nothing.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1114016
Themes - how to delete a default theme, not showing under Appearance

[cbaker_admin]

I logged this issue basedon fEBE backup results today. Was essentially told to ignore it. But as a lay person, I went to action it as FEBE was telling me something is not backed up. I would not know if it is critical or not. Just if it is up to date or not e.g. v38 and I am on v45.

FEBE does not ever backup certain add-ons. Globally installed extensions and themes (such as the Fx default theme) fall into that category.

As for your questions about OPIE, I think you should try the more advanced version: OPIE2. While slightly more complicated to use, it gives you total control over which preferences are backed up for any extension.

[seasalt]

Hi Chuck. Thankyou for your reply.

I dont think its an issue between OPIE 1 or OPIE 2. I just want OPIE to select ALL my addons with preferences. it fails to do this and so requires me to go thru the list one by one and work out which ones are missing. Its a huge improvement on nothing, as was case pre-OPIE.

I did install OPIE2. But I definitely dont need to go down individual preference level. I am a lay person. Anyways I did try to test it out, but it said no addons with preferences. mmm.. It appears you use OPIE2 to select an addon one by one. That is great at last resort. I prefer OPIE that just goes ahead and gets ALL my addons.

Maybe I missed something. I am not very technical.

As from earlier message, I think I shared I think there is a problem with OPIE. As I redid the export and have "overwrite files". Although I got the confirmation message "20 new files created", the create date/time of exported preference files were from the first export, rather than the current date/time of the 2nd export.

Thankyou for your time.

[cbaker_admin]

OPIE can only get the preferences that developers followed Mozilla Best Practices by declaring an extensions' preferences in the add-on's defaults\preferences folder. Unfortunately, many developers do not do this. That is where OPIE2 comes in. It not only searches the default\preferences folder, but examines the Fx prefs.js file and makes an educated guess as to which preferences belong to which extension.

The reason you probably did not see any preferences when you tried OPIE2 is because you first have to initialize it (OPIE2 Options > Configure > Initialize). OPIE2 will not recognize any preferences until this is done.

As for the exported files have a prior timestamp, I cannot duplicate this. Are you certain the export directory is the same? I don't have access to an OS X machine, but it does work for me with Windows 7 and Fx v45.

[Lithopsian]

This is not an issue of "best practice" (or maybe it is in some cases, but not all). OPIE assumes that addons without an optionsURL specified in the manifest don't use preferences. That's absurd, and it causes some at least of the listed addons to be missed for no real reason. I checked several that meet the requirements for defaults/preferences, but OPIE never even looks because they don't have optionsURL set.

[cbaker_admin]

If an extension uses user-set preferences, then there needs to be a way to set them. The "best practice" is to provide a dialog box (i.e., the optionsURL). Of course the user could set them manually via about:config, but that is not very practical.

Yes, OPIE2 assumes the lack of the optionsURL tag means the extension does not have any user-set preferences. How else could it know?

[Lithopsian]

Plenty of addons don't have an optionsURL dialog box and there's nothing "bad practice" about it. Suit yourself though, its your addon that doesn't work very well.