Firefox Assistant

[Alfred0]

Ah, would it be possible to turn it on conditionally based on the installed firefox version?

 

Or perhaps make it a workflow config option that’s disabled by default?

Edited January 24, 2021 by Alfred0

[deanishe]

2 hours ago, Alfred0 said:

Ah, would it be possible to turn it on conditionally based on the installed firefox version?

 

I don't think so. It's a syntax error, which typically means the script will fail to parse, never mind run.

 

I think if I mark the new version of the extension as incompatible with older versions of Firefox, it should be okay. People running older versions of Firefox shouldn't get the update, and if they want to install the extension, they can grab an older version of it.

[Alfred0]

15 hours ago, deanishe said:

 

I don't think so. It's a syntax error, which typically means the script will fail to parse, never mind run.

 

I think if I mark the new version of the extension as incompatible with older versions of Firefox, it should be okay. People running older versions of Firefox shouldn't get the update, and if they want to install the extension, they can grab an older version of it.

 

Great news! I'll keep an eye out for the new release.

[deanishe]

Just now, Alfred0 said:

Great news! I'll keep an eye out for the new release.

 

It doesn't work properly. Looks like the author of the PR didn't test it. Not particularly surprising, seeing as they didn't even bother to check which versions of Firefox the workflow supports.

[Signynt]

For some reason when I try to select a tab from the search it takes forever to switch to it. It takes upwards of a minute to suddenly switch to the selected tab.

[deanishe]

47 minutes ago, Signynt said:

For some reason when I try to select a tab from the search it takes forever to switch to it. It takes upwards of a minute to suddenly switch to the selected tab.

See previous page. Unless someone who’s affected by the issue can figure it out, you’re going to have to wait (a possibly long time) till I get an M1 Mac and/or upgrade to Big Sur.

[nchicong]

Hi @deanishe

Thanks for the great workflow.

 

I'm looking for a way to 'Activate Tab' by tab index instead of tab ID.

The idea is like

`./alfred-firefox -tabIndex 2 -action "Activate Tab" tab`

 

I looked at the workflow code and it looks like it's only using tab ID.

I would appreciate it if you have any suggestion.

[deanishe]

The workflow doesn't expose (or use) window or tab indices. I deliberately avoided that because they can change very quickly.

 

What are you trying to do?

[nchicong]

@deanishe

I work with a lot of tabs and on Chrome I have a workflow to map Ctrl + number to jump to the tabs.

Ctrl + [0 to 9] to jump from tab 0 to 9

Ctrl + [q to p] to jump from tab 10 to 19

Ctrl + [a to ;] to jump from tab 20 to 29

 

I customized the workflow named Chrome Control

```

x={query}
y=$(($x - 1))
./chrome.js focus 0,$y

```

 

I would like to do the same on Firefox. Some times during research, on Firefox with Vertical Tabs, I use up to 40 tabs.

[deanishe]

Right, I've got you. I can see how that would be very useful.

[vitor]

Without a way to specify the keyboard layout, the feature as explained could cause some problems.

 

Even in places where QWERTY is used, the a to ; might not work. It wouldn’t in Portugal, where ; is to the right of m (they key next to l is ç).

[nchicong]

@vitor

I don't think the keyboard layout is a matter. For me, I simply hard code the key as each input. I attached my screenshot of my setup.

 

Another required component is to combine this with browser extensions like

https://addons.mozilla.org/vi/firefox/addon/tab_numbers/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tab-number/hgncmdcajoembohielokebjhljfajddj

Edited February 24, 2021 by nchicong

[Sridhar Katakam]

Just set this one up.

 

1) Now I do not see any bookmarks in the bookmarks bar ( Cmd + Shift + B ).

 

They are fine in the sidebar ( Cmd + B ).

 

I am on M1 Big Sur 11.3.

 

Any idea?

 

2) I have the "Add to Pinboard" bookmarklet ("popup" from https://pinboard.in/howto/).

 

When I launch it from bml, Firefox shows "Firefox Developer Edition prevented this site from opening a pop-up window." notice. I can click Preferences and allow pop-up for this site or let it run for that instance. But is there a way to make it work for all the sites w/o showing the notice?

Edited April 29, 2021 by Sridhar Katakam

[deanishe]

4 hours ago, Sridhar Katakam said:

Now I do not see any bookmarks in the bookmarks bar

 

The workflow and extension do not change your data in any way. I have no idea how the workflow or extension could possibly do that.

 

4 hours ago, Sridhar Katakam said:

But is there a way to make it work for all the sites w/o showing the notice?

 

Sorry, I have no idea. Ask on a Firefox forum.

[Sridhar Katakam]

Thanks for your reply and the workflow. It is pretty useful.

Edited April 29, 2021 by Sridhar Katakam

[raguay.customct]

I can confirm that on the M1 macs, it does run very slowly. The main program, alfred-firefox, used is a compiled go language program. That is most likely the issue. It's been compiled on an x86 system, but the M1s are ARM based. It has to launch the Rosetta 2 environment to compile the object code to ARM and then run the program. It doesn't save the results, so it has to be done each time it is launched. 

 

The issue that explains how to compile it yourself is here:  https://github.com/deanishe/alfred-firefox/issues/23

 

You have to have the ARM64 build of the go language tools in order to build the sources. After recompiling, it is faster than ever now!

Edited April 30, 2021 by raguay.customct

[deanishe]

8 hours ago, raguay.customct said:

It has to launch the Rosetta 2 environment to compile the object code to ARM and then run the program. It doesn't save the results, so it has to be done each time it is launched.

 

Ah crap. Can I cross-compile an ARM64 binary on my AMD64 machine?

[zendude]

Hey All

 

Just wanted to let people who were having issues connecting the extension with the workflow as documented here https://github.com/deanishe/alfred-firefox/issues/15 that I was able to get it to work by moving the alfred backup folder to my dropbox directory. The backup folder was originally placed in a directory that synced with icloud and also had a weird long name (e.g. "3 resources and things"). I'm not a coder at all but kinda felt that if the worklow can't find server.sh, etc... that it might have something to do with the folder length, naming, or icloud.

 

Anyway, thanks Deanishe for this contribution. It really makes life easier!

[Alfred0]

Hi @deanishe, I wanted to run the following idea by you to see how feasible you think it is.

 

During the day I typically have a lot of tabs open and use Firefox a lot to access Jira which is my companies ticket tracking platform. Throughout the day I'll use Firefox to:

1. Open new Jira tickets
2. Update existing jira tickets
3. Open tickets I have worked on recently e.g. yesterday, last week, etc..
4. Open bookmarks to saved Agile boards, etc..

Firefox assistant has made this so much easier to use and I use it throughout the day 😎

 

One feature I find myself longing for is the ability to perform any of the actions above without having to figure out which type of url it is e.g. Open tab, bookmark or history item.

 

My question/request is whether it would be possible to support the following workflow:

1. Configure a keyboard shortcut to open the workflow showing all my tabs sorted by recently used. (This is already possible 🙌)
2. When searching however, instead of just searching open tabs it would also search across all types mentioned above (eg. open tabs, bookmarks or history items)
   1. Matches against open tabs would be prioritized / boosted to the top to prevent opening duplicate urls.
3. If the url isn't currently open then it fallback to show results matching history items / bookmarks.
4. Hit enter to open the url in a new tab.

Apologies for the long post but this is something I've been hoping for for ages. 

 

Having the ability to quickly open and navigate to any browser tab, bookmark, or history item is imo the holy grail of browser tab management 😁.

 

Interested to hear your thoughts 🙏

[deanishe]

This has been requested before, and I totally see value in the feature. The problem is, I haven't figured out a way to do it that isn't crap in some important way.

 

On 10/23/2021 at 3:51 AM, Alfred0 said:

Matches against open tabs would be prioritized / boosted to the top to prevent opening duplicate urls.

 

This is the tricky bit. One of Alfred's most important features is its "knowledge" – its ability to learn from your behaviour, so you can train it to associate, say, the query "jt" with your "Jira – Tickets" tab.

 

The only way to enforce tabs > bookmarks > history ordering is for the workflow to disable Alfred's knowledge, which I am very reluctant to do.

 

The obvious alternative – only show bookmarks if no tabs match; only show history if no bookmarks match, either – kinda sucks. I mean, imagine trying to get your Google Mail bookmark to show up when you've got 15 Google searches open in tabs.

 

If I (or anyone else) can think of a decent way to implement it, I'm certainly open to doing it.

Edited October 25, 2021 by deanishe

[vitor]

I haven’t played with uids in non-standard ways for a while, but setting them on some results and not others might work for partial prioritisation.

 

On 10/23/2021 at 2:51 AM, Alfred0 said:

Matches against open tabs would be prioritized / boosted to the top to prevent opening duplicate urls.

That goal doesn’t need that solution. An alternative would be to, on opening a bookmark, checking if an open tab matches the URL and switching to it if it does.

[deanishe]

3 hours ago, vitor said:

haven’t played with uids in non-standard ways for a while, but setting them on some results and not others might work for partial prioritisation.

 

That’s what I was wondering about. Have tabs, bookmarks and history, and only set UIDs on the first non-empty group. That should keep the other groups below them?

 

I guess I'll have to switch to using URLs as UIDs instead of Firefox's own UIDs.

 

3 hours ago, vitor said:

An alternative would be to, on opening a bookmark, checking if an open tab matches the URL and switching to it if it does.

 

All URL handling is done via scripts, so a user could add that behaviour themselves.

Edited October 25, 2021 by deanishe

[Alfred0]

22 hours ago, deanishe said:

This is the tricky bit. One of Alfred's most important features is its "knowledge" – its ability to learn from your behaviour, so you can train it to associate, say, the query "jt" with your "Jira – Tickets" tab.

 

The only way to enforce tabs > bookmarks > history ordering is for the workflow to disable Alfred's knowledge, which I am very reluctant to do.

 

I can see why you might be reluctant to do this but I would personally be fine with this tradeoff if need be 😁

 

13 hours ago, deanishe said:

That’s what I was wondering about. Have tabs, bookmarks and history, and only set UIDs on the first non-empty group. That should keep the other groups below them?

 

Sounds promising 🤞

 

I have honestly been after this functionality for so many years now... super excited to see if this is possible 😎

[jjchamberlain]

Just came across this extension. Love it! Thanks for creating this.

Has been working smoothly with everything in the workflow i've tried so far.

 

Fyi, I'm using Alfred 5 on four-year old MacBook Pro running Monterey.

[marfon]

I installed the workflow and the extension on my MacOS 13.0.1 MacBook Air, allowed the installation in Mac's security, and tried the troubleshooting stuff including ffass register workflow with browser, but the extension never connects. I've attached a screenshot of the extension debugger. Can I get some troubleshooting suggestions?