Questions for John

[Chris]

Hi John,

First, let me say that I don't want to be doing this if it puts any unwelcome burden on you.  I want to help, but if my help is unwelcome then I have no place here.  I honestly will not be offended in the least if this is your decision.

I've looked into your JavaScript and I kinda get it, but I can't figure out how to output data to look at the inner workings.  I found your 'debug' function, but when I called it from inside some of your methods and performed the required operation (adding or clicking the bookmark) I couldn't find my message in the console.  Am I missing something?

Thanks!
Chris

[John Marshall]

Sorry, I tried to warn you it was a mess. It basically evolved into
something I wasn't totally expecting it to be when I first started. I
really hate it. If you want to output information there are really 2
ways, the debug ways you may find are just wrappers (and might
intentionally have had the insides commented out). The first way to
debug is using the dump() method, this outputs to your console or
terminal. The second way is using Components.utils.reportError(). That
method outputs errors to the error console. There are alternate ways
involving more code that can also output text as warnings or messages.
I suggest reading mdc: developer.mozilla.org

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/DOM/Window.dump and https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Components.utils.reportError
may be useful.

Have you managed to do anything so far? I'm busy again but if not I
think I'll just submit the current version... maybe with a few more
fixes. Although there are bugs I think it still fixes enough things
from the currently released version to make it more worth while.

[Chris]

Nope, I've been waiting to ask questions.  I don't understand a lot of the preparation involved, but complex topics are supposed to be easier to learn if you start with "What's it doing?"  rather than "Why?" or "How?" or "What is it?"

I had actually just read about 'window.dump' and changed all my 'debug' calls to 'dump' right before reading your reply.  Then I added "dump('foo bar');" to the beginning of every function in nsIGMarksService.js.  At first I apparently had an unsteady hand, so some calls landed in prototype objects.  Those generated syntax errors, but when I corrected them the console went blank again.  (For the record, I am restarting Firefox to test my changes.)

In ALL things, strive for ><>,
Chris

[Chris]

I think I found the problem...  Does "console" conventionally mean the command-line rather than the GUI-based Error Console?  Regardless, Components.utils.reportError gets the job done.

Now I'm trying to find where the bookmarks are updated from the server?

Thanks!
Chris

[John Marshall]

If you are on windows open firefox with the -console flag, on linux or mac open firefox from the terminal. That is where dump will print to.

[Chris]

Okay, now I have a handle on the basics...  What's a reproducible bug I can look into?  (I was going to hunt down one that's not reproducible, but I don't think I'm ready for that.)

Also, what do you think of logging errors to a text file which the user can check after experiencing a bug?

In ALL things, strive for ><>,
Chris

[Chris]

Update:  I've selected the bug which causes a menu middle-click to open multiple copies of each page.  If you would rather I work on something else, feel free to re-assign me.

I'm trying to find the function which is activated by a middle-click, but I can't find any "event-handler"-type function at all.  If I couldn't operate the program, I would think it did everything at startup...  Where do you build the menus, the sidebar, and the three windows?

To reiterate a previous point so it won't get lost in the thread, I would like to put an error-log in the distributed extension so we can get debug output without asking the user to run Firefox from a terminal.

In ALL things, strive for ><>,
Chris