New Firefox add-on

[Balthazaar]

Another question, for anyone really. You mentioned having two different uTorrent servers. Would it be useful to be able to monitor both at once? With two icons? A simple toggle between the multiple servers on one icon? Other ideas?

I'd like that option. A simple toggle between multiple servers on one icon would be my preference.

[lithopsian]

I like the idea of supporting multiple torrent servers and I'll try to get that in the next release to coincide with the release of Firefox 4.0. Assuming I can fix this NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE bug.

[lithopsian]

You can temporarily work around at least some of the errors by turning off the Send .torrent Files to uTorrent option on the Add Torrents tab. Let me know if this solves all your problems, but probably not. This extension is really three extensions in one, one for the status icon, one for handling magnet links, and one for handling torrent files. They could conceivably be interfering with eachother.

The other errors show that you are connecting to utserver and getting a token, but then are failing to get a torrent list. One way to reproduce these symptoms is to deny cookies. OMG, I hope it isn't something that simple! Cookies would stop the webui working also, I think.

If not cookies then I have uploaded a beta2 with better debugging code to diagnose this failure. In about:config, the extensions.uTorrent.request preference will show the complete torrent list request string, extensions.uTorrent.error will show any non-success HTTP status response of the torrent list request, and extensions.uTorrent.status will show the corresponding text. All the debugging output is controlled by another preference, extensions.uTorrent.debug which defaults to true in this beta release.

[Balthazaar]

One way to reproduce these symptoms is to deny cookies. OMG, I hope it isn't something that simple! Cookies would stop the webui working also, I think.

It's the cookies. I have set 'Accept third-party cookies' to off in FF.

Once checked, the addon worked.

However, I would like to keep this preference off. Any way to allow your addon to work with 'accept third-party cookies' off?

Thanks!

[lithopsian]

I can't make the extension override your security settings, but you can configure it to allow cookies from your uTorrent servers. In the options tabs, click on Exceptions, enter the IP address or hostname of your torrent server, then click allow. It should show in the exceptions list and it should allow cookies from that server.

Alternatively, you could turn off token_auth in the uTorrent advanced settings but that isn't recommended because it allows a possible security exploit.

[Balthazaar]

I added an exception for the server. That did it. Thanks for your help & patience!

[Balthazaar]

If a my be so bold...now that I have it working, is there a way to make it open the webui in a new tab?

[lithopsian]

If a my be so bold...now that I have it working, is there a way to make it open the webui in a new tab?

The icon fully respects your Firefox preferences for clicks. That probably means that a middle click will open the webui in a new tab for you. Also try the various ctrl/shift clicks for tabs opening in background/foreground, in new window, etc.

[Balthazaar]

You're right of course, a middle click opens a new tab. A left-click on the addon opens in the current tab. I thought that since I had 'Open new windows in a new tab' checked in FF, and settings for Tab Utilities are set so that bookmarks, location and search etc always open in a new tab. I expected the addon to respect those settings.

[lithopsian]

I can't support the preferences of every extension out there, so no chance that this extension will follow the settings of Tab Utilities. I've raised an enhancement request to have a setting to open the webui automatically in a new tab or window.

It won't be in the next release though, because I've put in support for multiple uTorrent servers and released another beta with that. I'll let that all settle in before releasing more functional changes.

[Balthazaar]

I can't support the preferences of every extension out there, so no chance that this extension will follow the settings of Tab Utilities. I've raised an enhancement request to have a setting to open the webui automatically in a new tab or window.

.

Excellent. Thanks.

It won't be in the next release though, because I've put in support for multiple uTorrent servers and released another beta with that. I'll let that all settle in before releasing more functional changes.

.

I've installed 0.1.3beta3 and it works for me! Thanks again!

[lithopsian]

Up to three uTorrent servers can now be configured in version 0.1.3.

[simonbcn]

Thanks for your work.

I use uTorrent 2.0.4 (on Wine in a Ubuntu server) and this add-on in FF 5.

It works well but the "Status" column in pop-up shows always "undefined". How can I fix this? I suppose that is a incompatibility with window version of µTorrent.

By other side, there is a similar add-on that it works with several client torrents: https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/firefox/addon/bittorrent-webui-120685/ that I use to add the torrent links to my µTorrent.

Why don't use your add-on to do this? Because your add-on opens an annoying message box that I have to close, however this add-on uses the native system notifications (notify on Linux) that I haven't to close. Also in linux, if I click on that notification automatically it opens the WebUI.

I think it would be a great idea implements this in your add-on.

Regards.

[lithopsian]

Yes, the status column as used by the addon is not supplied in the 2.0.4 version of the API. I don't think it is in 2.2 either, but appears in 3.0. I don't think this is a difference between Windows and Linux, although obviously there is no Linux version prior to the 3.0 alpha.

One of the reasons that my addon doesn't do what BitTorrent WebUI+ does is that there is already a perfectly good addon called BitTorrentWebUI+ And obviously the original BitTorrent WebUI. This is a complex addon which actually downloads the whole torrent file and then feeds it to uTorrent through the webui API. This is reliable and gives full control to the addon, but is also difficult to code and slow in operation. It is much better when you have private torrents or other protected downloads (eg. cookies or referrer checking) but unnecessarily complex for many people.

The torrent adding features of my addon were simple features that could be added quickly, first to pass magnet links through the webui API, and then to pass a torrent file URL through the API. They were added to provide a quick means of adding straightforward torrents, not to replace the full features of other addons. I almost regret doing it, because I get nothing but complaints that they don't handle password authentication, cookies, fetch the newspaper, etc, etc, instead of compliments that they provide extra functionality that wasn't originally a part of the addon.

I'm not sure which native notification you are referring to. The one that says "Torrent Added"? Hardly native, and it can be turned off in the preferences. You say clicking on it opens the webui which I find confusing. Or are you referring to the torrent list popup? Don't click on it at all would be my advice. It is a tooltip that will close itself, or it will disappear as soon as you click anywhere else. Or are you asking for my addon to open the webui when you click on the torrent list? Or on the "Torrent added" notification? Are you running in compact mode (icon) or non-compact mode (text in the status bar)?

[simonbcn]

Yes, the status column as used by the addon is not supplied in the 2.0.4 version of the API. I don't think it is in 2.2 either, but appears in 3.0.

I've tested now and it doesn't appear in v2.2.xx

And the 3.0 version doesn't work on Wine.

One of the reasons that my addon doesn't do what BitTorrent WebUI+ does is that there is already a perfectly good addon called BitTorrentWebUI+

I think there is nothing wrong in looking at what others do and copy what works well. Copy helps improve.

BitTorrentWebUI is much broader because it encompasses other torrent clients but I only speak about a small portion of the add-on: the notifications.

I'm not sure which native notification you are referring to. The one that says "Torrent Added"? Hardly native, and it can be turned off in the preferences. You say clicking on it opens the webui which I find confusing. Or are you referring to the torrent list popup? Don't click on it at all would be my advice. It is a tooltip that will close itself, or it will disappear as soon as you click anywhere else. Or are you asking for my addon to open the webui when you click on the torrent list? Or on the "Torrent added" notification? Are you running in compact mode (icon) or non-compact mode (text in the status bar)?

The best thing would be that you test it but I explain more about this:

I think the ideal notifications should not be intrusive.

The notifications of your add-on:

The notifications of BitTorrentWebUI addon:

The message showed by BitTorrentWebUI is closed automatically after a few seconds (I can close it manually too), it isn't intrusive (it's shown in a corner, not in the screen center), it informs of the added torrent name and if I click on it, it opens the webUI in my default browser.

Regards. (sorry for my bad english)

[lithopsian]

I think there is nothing wrong in looking at what others do and copy what works well.

Feel free to copy away and make exactly the addon you want I'm not going to bulk out a small low impact addon with a whole load of functions already provided by another addon, especially when they work perfectly well together.

I've checked out the notification mechanism in the other addon. I'll think about making changes to the notification method. It can already be turned off completely, which is fairly unintrusive! The alert is actually a built-in Firefox alert notification, but is implemented by Mozilla to be different on each platform, which is risky on Linux because it won't work on some desktop setups, and it only works on Mac with Growl. I'll look at options for (semi-)automatically opening the webui when a torrent is loaded. Of course the webui is already available with one click on the icon.

[lithopsian]

I've added an option for native style alerts that will be in the next release. The default will still be a Firefox dialog box so that it works for everyone.

[simonbcn]

I've added an option for native style alerts that will be in the next release. The default will still be a Firefox dialog box so that it works for everyone.

Thanks. I'll test it.

[lithopsian]

I've uploaded a beta with the new alert. Just beta for now. I need to do some more testing of this and of the network timeout logic.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/torrent-status-tool/versions/

[simonbcn]

I'm testing, it seems to work but the notification is too poor. It would be better if it shows the name of torrent added and it allows to open the webUI to click in the notification.

By other side, if I added same torrent, this add-on shows a successful notification but it's an error: the torrent already exists.

Regards.

ADD:

Error when I try to add one torrent from 2 privates trackers. It confirms successful torrent add but the torrent isn't added to µTorrent.

The error console shows this XML/XUL error 3 times:

Note: Empty string passed to getElementById().
Source file: chrome://utorrent/content/uTorrentSettings.xul

[lithopsian]

I'm testing, it seems to work but the notification is too poor. It would be better if it shows the name of torrent added and it allows to open the webUI to click in the notification.

By other side, if I added same torrent, this add-on shows a successful notification but it's an error: the torrent already exists.

The addon doesn't know the name of the torrent added (because it doesn't look in the torrent file, and because the information is not present on a magnet link), nor does it know whether a torrent already exists. It only knows that the webui API says "OK" or not. The native alert doesn't properly respect the mouse clicks, modifiers, and preferences wrt opening in new windows, new tabs, foreground,background, etc, so I didn't implement it.

Error when I try to add one torrent from 2 privates trackers. It confirms successful torrent add but the torrent isn't added to µTorrent.

This is a known "feature" of the webui API. It won't be fixed because it can't be fixed from my side. The webui says "OK", but may or may not actually add the torrent. Private trackers are generally not supported because utserver does not have the authentication information that Firefox has. uTorrent says "OK, got the torrent", but then silently fails to add it. This is documented on the addon support page (and the download page, I think) and has also been discussed here already.

The error console shows this XML/XUL error 3 times:

Note: Empty string passed to getElementById().
Source file: chrome://utorrent/content/uTorrentSettings.xul

The error console says a lot of things

[simonbcn]

I'm testing' date=' it seems to work but the notification is too poor. It would be better if it shows the name of torrent added and it allows to open the webUI to click in the notification.

By other side, if I added same torrent, this add-on shows a successful notification but it's an error: the torrent already exists.

[/quote']

The addon doesn't know the name of the torrent added (because it doesn't look in the torrent file, and because the information is not present on a magnet link), nor does it know whether a torrent already exists. It only knows that the webui API says "OK" or not. The native alert doesn't properly respect the mouse clicks, modifiers, and preferences wrt opening in new windows, new tabs, foreground,background, etc, so I didn't implement it.

Error when I try to add one torrent from 2 privates trackers. It confirms successful torrent add but the torrent isn't added to µTorrent.

This is a known "feature" of the webui API. It won't be fixed because it can't be fixed from my side. The webui says "OK", but may or may not actually add the torrent. Private trackers are generally not supported because utserver does not have the authentication information that Firefox has. uTorrent says "OK, got the torrent", but then silently fails to add it. This is documented on the addon support page (and the download page, I think) and has also been discussed here already.

The error console shows this XML/XUL error 3 times:

Note: Empty string passed to getElementById().
Source file: chrome://utorrent/content/uTorrentSettings.xul

The error console says a lot of things

I'm reading a lot of excuses for not doing a better add-on.

And about the private trackers, I don't sure how your add-on works, but with the another add-on works with all trackers.

Bye.

[lithopsian]

I'm reading a lot of excuses for not doing a better add-on.

And about the private trackers, I don't sure how your add-on works, but with the another add-on works with all trackers.

Bye.

Glad to be of help

Now let me be perfectly honest so there is no confusion. This is my addon, written to do something I needed and do it well, then offered to anyone that needs that function. Most people who need that function are grateful (I like to think), and a few even take time out of their day to thank me. I've tried to be polite and explain to you why some features might be added while others won't, but at the end of the day it is my decision so stop whining that I won't write a custom addon for you. Ingrate

[moondoggie]

okay, let me start off with a "WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN MY WHOLE LIFE"

a great add-on, that does everything i need.

i have set it up on the laptop, and i use it on localserver. Today i'm going to try to add the home desktop as the 2nd server and see how it goes.

looking forward to ur next release with the notifications thingy mentioned (for once i won't try to fix something that is not broken and install a beta )

I dont get all the benefits of it as much as i would like, because i use the vertical toolbar addon, so i must use the icon version. if i press the compact mode, it stretches to big

Do you think anything can be done about it? i have one suggestion about the issue? could an option be added that splits the U: and D: to two lines?

rock on mate, and keep up the great work

edit: p.s. i'm running a windows 7 x64 with firefox 5.0.1

[lithopsian]

For a vertical toolbar option, would vertical text work? Seems like just breaking the lines would still stretch it (also it just says uTorrent when the server is unavailable which would stretch it anyway). Having the length of the text vary constantly might really mess up your toolbar. Could you do a mockup of the sort of arrangement that would work for you? I'll think about it and see how the information could be fitted that way.