Hi @all,

first of all a big THANKS to those of you, who have already tested the first beta version of the (hopefully) upcoming Redirect Cleaner 3.0.0 release. (Those of you, who were not part of the beta testing, yet, I've included the information regarding the first beta at the end of this email for reference.)

In the last week I've been busy improving the user experience side of Redirect Cleaner 3.0.0. There are a few changes from beta1 to beta2, that are worth mentioning:

> 1) The preference "enable" has been renamed to "mode", because after all this is what is actually happening.
>
> Redirect Cleaner switches between the "Whitelist" mode (All requests get cleaned except requests matching the regular expression of the whitelist) and the "Blacklist" mode (Only requests matching the regular expression of the blacklist get cleaned).
> 2) PaleMoon is now officially supported!
>
> Actually this was not as easy as just adding the new GUID of PaleMoon in the install.rdf. Unfortunately there had to be some more unexpected changes in the source code as well. (I also had to patch DOM Inspector myself.) So PaleMoon users, please test this version extensively!!!
> 3) The toolbarbutton now shows a new panel with the history of the cleaned requests when making a right click on it. (The new panel probably needs a little more love.) What do you think of the new panel so far?
> 4) PaleMoon and SeaMonkey should have the very same toolbarbutton as Firefox (including the new panel). Again, PaleMoon and (hopefully) SeaMonkey users, please test the new version!

Again, please test the new version 3.0.0b2 on as many devices (Smartphone / Tablet / Notebook / Desktop), operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac, Android) and software (Firefox / Firefox e10s / SeaMonkey / PaleMoon / Fennec). It is still recommended to create a new profile, when you test the new version (see the information regarding the first beta for details)!

There is a known limitation at the moment: The toolbarbutton needs to be added manually to the toolbar on the first run after the installation. (However, it should get automatically placed on the last used position on restart and on activating / deactivating the add-on.) Don' worry: Adding the toolbarbutton automatically to the navigation bar on the first run after the installation is on my todolist!

Last but not least, there is another thing worth mentioning, that I have not mentioned in the beta1 email: The new approach to intercept requests makes it also possible to also clean links that you manually enter in the urlbar or links from other applications that use your browser to open a website.

I have been told that Steam opens links like this in your browser, that get now cleaned as well:
> https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?url=http://puu.sh/bKosb/892e365fae.png

Just for reference to those of you, who were not part of the beta testing, yet:
> I've been busy the last couple of weeks working on the new version! :-)
>
> I've looked into all three kinds of add-ons - classic XUL based add-ons, restartless add-ons without SDK and restartless add-ons with SDK. All three types of add-ons can work with e10s, but also have their pros and cons.
>
> The problem with classic XUL based add-ons is, that they don't support Android. The problem with the SDK at the moment in my opinion is, that it's neither easier to develop an add-on nor does it support SeaMonkey. So I've decided to write Redirect Cleaner from scratch - this time restartless (without SDK) and supporting Firefox 31+, SeaMonkey 2.29+ and Android 31+.
>
> Thanks for pointing me in the right direction with "http-on-modify-request". Especially your hint about the function nsIHttpChannel.redirectTo() was very helpful! When I worked on Redirect Cleaner 2.0.0 a few years back when Firefox 4 was about to get released, I've already looked at "http-on-modify-request". But back then I wasn't able to redirect the channel to the cleaned URL - all I managed to do back then was to stop the request, but I did not manage to create a new channel with the cleaned URL.
>
> The function nsIHttpChannel.redirectTo() was not available back then. It got introduced in Firefox 20 - I think. Now with this new builtin function it's actually quite simple to rewrite the request and redirect it to the cleaned URL.
>
> All the basics should already be up and running in the new version. So please install the new version, test it and of course give me some feedback!
>
> It is recommended that you install the new version in a new profile. However, it should be also save to install it in your current profile. But if you install it in your current profile, please open the inline options for Redirect Cleaner in the Add-ons Manager and reset / empty your blacklist and whitelist.
>
> The format for the blacklist / whitelist has changed significantly: In Redirect Cleaner 2 it was link-based - meaning you could blacklist / whitelist certain links on certains domains. Like all links on archive.org or all links containing facebook.com or twitter.com.
>
> Now Redirect Cleaner 3 works request-based - meaning Redirect Cleaner doesn't listen for link clicks anymore. Instead it hooks into the actual request to the server. And as such both blacklist and whitelist can now be used to always allow / always deny certain requests.
>
> At the moment both blacklist and whitelist are regular expressions, so you can use something like this in the whitelist, in order to prevent requests containing archive.org, digg.com, facebook.com and twitter.com from being cleaned:
>> (archive.org|digg.com|facebook.com|twitter.com)
>
> The whitelist should work like: If Redirect Cleaner is "enabled", clean all requests by default except requests matching the regular expression of the whitelist. The blacklist should work like: If Redirect Cleaner is "disabled", don't clean any requests by default except requests matching the regular expression of the blacklist.
>
> In other words: All requests matching the regular expression of the whitelist, will never be cleaned. All requests matchng the regular expression of the blacklist will always be cleaned. All other requests will be cleaned / not be cleaned depending on whether Redirect Cleaner is enabled or disabled.
>
> The SeaMonkey version of Redirect Cleaner is lacking a toolbarbutton, because it is far too complicated to implement this. Of course the Android version of Redirect Cleaner doesn't have a toolbarbutton, too.
>
> Again, please install the attached version of Redirect Cleaner 3.0.0b1, test it and of course give me some feedback! If you have a smartphone with Android and Firefox, please install Redirect Cleaner 3.0.0b1 there, too.

I am going on vacation from November 1st to November 22nd. I don't know if I have enough time to continue the development of the new version of Redirect Cleaner before the beginning of December. Anyway, please don't hesitate to write me as soon as you have tested the new version - either success or failure. And please write me anytime, if you experience any unexpected behavior on some websites. (Or if you don't.)

When you write me, please also include the operating system version and software version, so I can get an overview of which versions have been tested and which versions might need a little more testing.

At the longest I will get back to you at the beginning of December! :-)

Best regards,
Alexander myaddons@gmx.de

Hi @all,

another day another beta version! :-)

This time a new "animation" is included. Every time Redirect Cleaner cleans a request, the icon will highlight for 1 second. By highlight I mean the black arrow will change its color to yellow. I know this is a feature that some of you have been waiting for a VERY long time.

At the moment you have to manually enable the new animation in the options - the new option is named "Highlight". But I think about changing this to be enabled by default until the release of the new version. (Of course the animation could still be disabled manually in the options then.)

I don't know, if you have already noticed, but since the last beta version you can open the original requests in a new tab by double clicking on the menuitem in the "history" panel of the toolbarbutton. So if Redirect Cleaner should - by accident - clean a request that should not have been cleaned, it is now very easy to open the original request. (I have forgotten to mention this new feature in the announcement for the third beta version.)

I hope you enjoy the new beta version and especially the way the new version has developed in the last couple of beta versions! I personally have the feeling the new version is pretty stable and pretty much feature complete.

So unless you find any (major) problems in the new beta version, I can think of releasing the new version after my vacation at the beginning of December.

Best regards,
Alexander myaddons@gmx.de