Firefox Assistant

[Alfred0]

WOW, the quality, configurability and functionality of this workflow is amazing... especially the speed the results are returned 🤯

 

I'm honestly just going through all your workflows and installing them one by one 😁 

 

One feature request, that I've always longed for but seems has never been possible without a complimentary firefox addon, is the ability for the default sorting of the tabs to be by most recently used.

 

I'm constantly jumping in and out of my browser all day and often times have a lot of tabs open and don't often remember the name of the tab so having a shortcut that quickly opens up my ff tabs sorted by MRU would be A M A Z I N G!!!

 

Not sure if this is in fact possible but having the complimentary addon makes me hopeful in addition to you thinking this idea has any merit to begin with  

[deanishe]

On 9/27/2020 at 12:42 AM, Alfred0 said:

Not sure if this is in fact possible but having the complimentary addon makes me hopeful in addition to you thinking this idea has any merit to begin with  

 

It's a good idea. As far as I can tell, Firefox doesn't provide this information (when each tab was last activated), so the extension would have to track tab activation itself. That doesn't look too hard to do.

 

I wouldn't hold your breathe, though: I don't plan to update this workflow any time soon.

[Alfred0]

Was getting pretty excited until that last part lol... I'll keep my fingers crossed 🤞

 

Another question I'm sure has come up before but would it be possible to return the site favicon for each URL?

 

 

Edited September 29, 2020 by Alfred0

[deanishe]

2 hours ago, Alfred0 said:

Another question I'm sure has come up before but would it be possible to return the site favicon for each URL?

 

What do you mean "return the site favicon"?

[Alfred0]

The favicon firefox uses to represent that site in their tabs.

 

The idea being to use the same icon for Alfreds result icon.

[deanishe]

Dude, I know what a favicon is; it’s what you mean by “return” that wasn’t clear.
 

39 minutes ago, Alfred0 said:

The idea being to use the same icon for Alfreds result icon.

Doubtful. Regular favicons are far too small to use as workflow icons. They’d look ridiculous (and I’m not sure if Alfred even supports .ico files).

 

And finding the various alternative icons offered via meta tags and manifest files is complex.

[Alfred0]

 

8 hours ago, deanishe said:

Dude, I know what a favicon is;

 

I figured as much but I try not to presume anything. 🤷‍♂️

 

8 hours ago, deanishe said:

Regular favicons are far too small to use as workflow icons.

 

A lot of popular sites offer larger png or svg favicons that would look great in Alfred although as you say I don't know if Alfred supports either of those formats.

 

Another poor mans solution would be to allow for users to gather their own icons. You would store them in a pre-defined location and naming convention that the workflow could use or otherwise fall back to the default icon. I'm a creature of habit so ~10 icons would cover most sites/bookmarks I visit on a daily basis.

[deanishe]

23 minutes ago, Alfred0 said:

A lot of popular sites offer larger png or svg favicons

 

Like I said, finding these is complicated. If you want to implement it, I'll happily accept a pull request to add the feature, but it's not something I can see myself implementing any time soon.

 

31 minutes ago, Alfred0 said:

I'm a creature of habit so ~10 icons would cover most sites/bookmarks I visit on a daily basis.

 

You'll understand that what would suit you personally doesn't really move the needle. If I'm going to spend a couple of days on a feature, it has to be something that would benefit a large number of users (or just me).

[Alfred0]

On 9/29/2020 at 9:32 AM, deanishe said:

Like I said, finding these is complicated. If you want to implement it, I'll happily accept a pull request to add the feature, but it's not something I can see myself implementing any time soon.

 

Sounds good.

 

On 9/29/2020 at 9:32 AM, deanishe said:

You'll understand that what would suit you personally doesn't really move the needle. If I'm going to spend a couple of days on a feature, it has to be something that would benefit a large number of users (or just me).

 

Of course, never hurts to try  

 

Thx again for making such an awesome workflow!!

[deanishe]

5 minutes ago, Alfred0 said:

Sounds good.

 

If that's an offer to submit a PR, bear in mind I'd expect it to be implemented properly.

[Alfred0]

Hi @deanishe, it looks like another kind soul, not me, submitted a PR to add this exact feature!

 

Any chance you could merge that into an upcoming release 🙏

 

Thx!

Edited October 19, 2020 by Alfred0

[NetGeek]

The Firefox assistant stopped working when I was forced to upgrade to Firefox ESR 78.4.0-esr by corporate policy. The assistant shows status disconnected and there is not socket in /tmp for the workflow to communicate with Alfred. I attempted to remove and reinstall following the install directions but was not able to get the assistant and workflow to communicate.

[meeffe]

extension does not work at this moment

its connected, installed etc but when I try to open some tab or bookmarks it recognizes them but notinng happen - I mean it do not open bookmarks or tabs. I use ff 84

@deanishe it has a lof of potential but for some reason it does not work. Can you investigate?

 

[deanishe]

What do you expect me to be able to tell you from a screenshot?

[meeffe]

I thought that this is a global problem, not mine. What do you need?

[deanishe]

The output from Alfred's debugger when the workflow's not working would be a start.

[meeffe]

18 hours ago, deanishe said:

The output from Alfred's debugger when the workflow's not working would be a start.

you have it in the private message, thanks

[Menthos]

New user here and really loving your workflow. Had no problem with the setup. Bookmarks, history and searching for downloads is working flawlessly.

But sadly searching for tabs takes a long time. It takes about 2 minutes from the point where I search for a tab to the point where the tab displays. It's working but waiting that long make this feature useless.

Is anyone else experiencing this issue? I'm using the new M1 Macbook. Could that maybe be the problem (maybe it's working for someone else using the M1).

@deanisheI've sent you the the output from Aflred's debugger in a private message.

[deanishe]

I’ve no idea what the problem is. The delay appears to occur when the workflow sends an “activate tab” command to Firefox, which means there might be more information in the server log file (net.deanishe.alfred.firefox-assistant.server.log). Use ffass workflow:cache to open the cache directory in Finder.

 

[nycdude]

I am having the same problem as meeffe and Menthos above. That is, the Filter Tabs Filter is not working correctly. It takes two minutes to go to the tab.

@deanishe I PM'ed you the server.log file and the results of the debugger.  

 

Thanks!

 

[deanishe]

Sorry, I have no idea what the problem is. @meeffe Are you also using an M1 Mac/Big Sur?

[meeffe]

Yup

 

[deanishe]

Thanks. Well, if it's related to Big Sur or M1 processors, that would explain why I can't replicate the error. I also don't see myself having either of those any time soon. Sorry.

Edited January 24, 2021 by deanishe

[Alfred0]

Hi @deanishe, is there any chance you could review / merge this pull request? I use this workflow constantly throughout the day and would really love to have this feature added.

 

[deanishe]

12 minutes ago, Alfred0 said:

is there any chance you could review / merge this pull request?

 

I've merged it, but it's written using new syntax that isn't supported by all versions of Firefox currently in use.