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XStringBundle NS_ERROR_FAILURE

I got this error message on Firefox Error Console after adding fr-FR locale to BuildMonitor, which caused it to fail initialising the status bar feeds.

Error: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)
[nsIStringBundle.
GetStringFromName]"  nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame
:: XStringBundle :: getString :: line 17"  data: no]
Source File: XStringBundle
Line: 17

Googling gave me some clues but still nothing obvious to solve the problem. At first I thought it has something to do with the non-ASCII characters, so I did a binary-replace on the property values, but still no luck. It’s only after I cat-ed the file then I noticed an empty space before the first property key. This empty space turned out to be a weird character that didn’t show up on Eclipse text editor, gedit, and vi.

I still don’t know what that character is. Here’s what Eclipse compare editor showed when I compared the cleaned up line with the original line, notice the non-ASCII character before monitor.init property key.

And BuildMonitor speaks French after that character is removed. Parlez-vous anglais?

BuildMonitor v0.9 - Usage Video

BuildMonitor v0.9 has been released, you can get it from the usual place.

The most useful improvement from this release is the ability to add new feed via right click menu of a link. Other improvements include the ability to remove the feed via status bar right click menu or from preferences menu. It’s also now possible to rearrange the order of the feeds via preferences menu.

I made a quick video (using recordMyDesktop) showing how easy it is to monitor Hudson feeds using the Firefox Add-on.

On l10n front, BuildMonitor has been translated to Japanese. Thank you, Sogabe-san.

I had to borrow a laptop with Windows to take this screenshot. I think Firefox 3.0.3 locale switching on Ubuntu is borked, the web pages do pick up the correct locale, but the add-ons ignore it.

100+ Custom Emptiness

Five months since v0.1 was released, Emptiness Theme has been downloaded 5,867 times and given 4/5 stars average rating. Not bad. Even though it’s not as popular as other themes with fancy graphic design, I think Emptiness has its own target audience with it’s simplistic style.

I’m particularly happy to find (via Google search) more than 100 blogs with customised header image and some with customised css. Check them out on my Picasa Web album.

I used Nautilus Image Converter to resize all images via a simple select all, right click, and resize. If only it also has an auto image quality compression then it would be perfect.

BuildMonitor v0.8

BuildMonitor v0.8 is finally here, you can download it from Firefox Add-ons page. This release has a number of nice improvements…

Multiple feeds monitoring

Now you can monitor multiple Hudson instances by configuring their feeds in BuildMonitor preferences. All feed status icons will be displayed on the Firefox status bar, you can mouseover or click each icon to get the build details for the corresponding feed.

Feed status display

The way BuildMonitor uses the orbs to represent the health summary of the feed in v0.7 has been a source of confusion to the users. Many users thought that the orb indicates the latest build status, and not the overall health of the feed.

Another source of confusion is the fact that some users use a Hudson feed with multiple projects, some use a Hudson feed with only 1 project, and some use job-specific feeds, which led to different expectation of what status should be displayed.

With that, I decided to (1) make the status icon configurable with an option to display the overall feed health or the latest build status, and (2) use the weather icon for the overall feed health, while the latest build status keeps using the orbs.

Sound and alert window notifications

v0.8 now has configurable options to enable sound and alert window notifications when there’s a build failure.

When enabled, BuildMonitor plays a shattered glass sound (kudos to The Freesound Project) following a build failure. While alert window notification is enabled by default, it shows an alert a la Growl at the bottom right corner of your desktop.

Note that alert window on OS X only works since Firefox 3.

Green is the new blue

Quite surprisingly, I got asked a number of times about why Hudson uses blue to indicate success (to which I just pointed to this thread and that thread) and why can’t BuildMonitor uses green instead.

I was quite reluctant to add green-for-success as an option in BuildMonitor considering that Hudson still uses blue and the option to use green is not there yet. But I guess if the users want to use green by configuring via BuildMonitor’s preferences menu, then at least they’re aware of the difference, so this option is included in v0.8 . Blue is still the default though.

Personally, I like blue better :p.

Crisper icons

I added several new icons from Tango Project in v0.8, and updated the existing icons with new PNGs having transparent background.

Open page in new/current tab

Now you have the option to open build pages in a new tab or the current tab.

The preferences page now looks like this in v0.8…

Firefox add-on status

The add-on is still listed as experimental on addons.mozilla.org’s sandbox, it has been 4 months since I nominated it for approval. The AMO editors are still working on clearing up a huge list of add-ons to approve, I don’t know when BuildMonitor will be approved. I agree that the approval process can scale, but it doesn’t.

With almost 400 active BuildMonitor users (according to addons.mozilla.org), it would be very nice to auto-upgrade all of them. But since we’re still waiting for approval, you have to login again to download, sorry.

Please let me know what you think about this new release. Any comments? suggestions? criticisms?

The Wrong Way To Ask For Help On The Mailing List

... and some people wonder why they're ignored.

Update: I guess the message from the above drawing is not obvious to some readers (I’m such a bad ‘illustrator’ :p), so I’ll try to explain it a bit more…
I’ve been following various open source projects’ mailing list these past 5 years, and from time to time, there’s always some people who sends an email with a few short sentences (often in capitals, with lots of typos)… asking for HELP!!!, stating that something doesn’t work, and that it’s an urgent issue.

They need to remember that…

• most people volunteer to participate in those projects, i.e. it’s not their paid job.
• asking for help is ok, asking for HELP!!! is less ok.
• notifying the list that something doesn’t work is not good if you don’t accompany it with more information on what you did, how did you come up with the conclusion, or what sort of investigation you have done.
• if it’s urgent for you, it’s not always urgent for other people. most people won’t suddenly stop whatever they’re doing just to assist your urgent problem.

Mailing list etiquette. How to ask questions the smart way.