NOTICE: Autofill complete rewrite will start soon

[thdoan]

Hi guys,

Autofill was the first Chrome extension I ever wrote back in 2008. Over the past 8+ years I have learned a lot of new stuff, things that I would do differently if I were to develop a new extension today. Well, now is finally that time :-). I've never been quite satisifed with the archaic rules table and Profiles Manager in the Fields tab, which prompted me to start thinking about revamping the UI a few months back. Instead of doing a laundry list of minor improvements to an old foundation, I've decided to just rip it apart and start from the beginning to build a new, more modern foundation.

Unfortunately, this means that development will soon stop on the current version of Autofill, so you'll have to live with any bugs that crop up for the forseeable future. I do not know when the new version will be completed, but as I have a full-time job, family, and pending cross-ocean relocation to consider I reckon it will take a long while (i.e., measured in years).

IMHO I think the wait will be worth it. Here's what I have planned for now (in addition to all the current features):

• Redesign UI for better user experience
• Add hotkeys support:
  
• Hotkeys (Alt+0 to Alt+9) to execute profiles
• Hotkey to bring up Execute Profile overlay
• Hotkey to manually trigger autofill (like KeePass)
• Add ability to sort rules table
• Add ability to filter rules table
  
• Improve performance loading very large rules table (clustering)
• Remove Profiles Manager (you'll be able to select profile directly from the rules table)
• Add text clips functionality similar to InformEnter Firefox add-on
  
• Upgrade to HTML5 WebSQL database to bypass 5MB storage limit
  
• Use file system API for import/export (no more pasting CSV data!)
  
• Add progress bar to import
  
• Remove data migration function
  

Other features that I'm considering:

• Add AES data encryption for improved security
• Add ability to define variables to use in your rules
  
• Add Pastebin support so people can store rules there
  
• Add API to accept requests from other extensions
  
• Add delay option at rule level (pause between each autofill operation)
  
• Add ability to group rules within a profile (subcategories)
  
• Add jQuery support in JavaScript rules
  
• Add option to use sync storage API so your rules are synced across all your PCs*

* Note that the trade-off for enabling sync storage is you can only have 128KB worth of rules. To roughly see how many bytes your data requires now, do the following:

1. Go to Autofill Options
2. Press F12 to bring up developer tools
3. Go to the Console tab
4. Enter this command: JSON.stringify(localStorage).length

Apologies for the dust,

Tom