For those that frequent the site you may notice some cosmetic changes, which have also allowed me to turn on threaded comments for the blog, to better keep track of things that go on around here.

I’ve also been able to implement some of the features people have suggested or sent me code snippets for, and I hope to have a new version available soon.

Update: Users that have subscribed to my RSS feed will need to update the address, as this has also changed. Feedburner will redirect the old feeds for the next 30 days, but to ensure that you stay subscribed please update the feeds to either:

• Main RSS: http://feeds.ozzie.id.au/QuickProxy
• Comments RSS: http://feeds.ozzie.id.au/QuickProxy-Comments

Hopefully with this new structure even if I migrate the site again the feeds will stay in place.

QuickProxy is now a Recommended addon

It’s been a long time since QuickProxy was first launched, and apart from some cosmetic and behavior changes the extension remains as minimal as I can get it. I’m happy to announce that on the 11th of September, QuickProxy became a Recommended addon in its category.

While I was having a look around the site to see what this had changed, when viewing the section for Privacy & Security addons, I saw that QuickProxy was also on top for the Top Rated addon.

When I started on this project, I just wanted to get something as simple as possible out, as all I needed the extension for was for one purpose, to swap between the proxy and direct internet connection. After I had completed it, I decided that it was probably not that uncommon that people were in this situation, which is what pushed me to release this to the Mozilla addon site.

The original versions of QuickProxy looked very basic, with the preferences being just the proxy type that you wanted to select. Eventually requests came in about adding some behaviour on the browser launch, which seemed fair enough to me, as quite often I had fired up my browser, forgetting that I had the proxy enabled, and finding the sites I usually go to not working.

The next complaint was the icons, as I wasn’t the most artistic person. The icons have changed from the originals, which I had to admit were quite appalling, to the third icon set that you see in the preferences now. Some users wanted brighter icons, and this is when I introduced the option for different icon sets, to try to please as many people as possible.

As the extension is today, there are a few more things that I would like to change with how it works, but unfortunately my free time that I have to implement these is very limited. Currently I’m just focusing on keeping it up to date, and fixing any issues that come in (there is still one open issue, which involves the automatic proxy configuration, which is proving to be quite annoying to try to resolve).

I never imagined I’d get the number of users that I have today, and it is through your support and reviews that I have been able to achieve what QuickProxy is today. As always, I appreciate any feedback on the extension, and feel free to send any constructive criticism that you have, as the more people tell me the more I can try to adapt it to suit as many users as possible. As my current user base is averaging around 65,000 daily users, I know that not all changes will be welcome to everyone, which is why I will not be changing the base behaviour of the extension, and any future changes will be on an opt-in basis, with the options in the current preferences window.

Thank you all for your continued support to this addon, and hopefully I’ll be able to get some free time soon to work on the features some of you have requested.

I wish to thank all my users for being patient while this process ensued, as I wish there was more that I could do to get it pushed through Mozilla’s approval process.

This does bring some good news, as since the release is now public I can begin development and submission of new versions of QuickProxy, allowing me to work on some of the features that I’ve wanted to implement. I held off development while waiting for this to be approved, as last time I went ahead with dev work the extension got knocked back due to the code structure, and I had to re-write and re-test what I had planned anyway.

I want to give a big thank you to all the people that have donated to the extension through the Mozilla website. I initially developed the extension with no expectations of anything in return for the work, so just the fact that some of the users have found value in this extension has made me feel that I’ve accomplished my initial goals with the extension.

If you wish to run a server with the AusKreedz backend on it, then shoot me an email to admin@auskreedz.com (contact form is also available on the AusKreedz page), and I can look into helping you get this set up, but I will not run nor will I be responsible for what goes on in the servers.

I hope the users of AusKreedz enjoyed the time that they had their, it has been a pretty good two years, but unfortunately times change, and the costs for services I didn’t actually use became too prohibitive.

Work on the addon has been slow due to the workload my job is currently giving, but hopefully that will be changing not too far off (either one way or another), and I can then get to actually updating the extension to include some of the many features people have been requesting.

Don’t worry if you like the simplicity of the current extension, it won’t be bulked up with useless stuff and force you to wade through the preferences actually finding what you want. The new features are mainly focused on improving the usability of the extension (ie keyboard shortcuts) and making it compatible with other products (ie Thunderbird).

As always, I’m open to ideas/constructive criticism, so let me know what you would like in QuickProxy most, and if it doesn’t alter the extension too much, maybe you’ll have it included in a release sometime down the track.

This should make it compatible with the Firefox 3.5.1 release. Once again I do apologise for the release becoming outdated so quickly, which was caused by an oversight on my part when updating the latest version string to bring it in line with Firefox 3.5.

The release also includes a cosmetic fix for when the browser was first launched. This was caused by the re-code that took place for the 3.5 release, and was due to the update of the icon being done before the startup processing had completed. Now with the icon update occuring after the processing has completed, this problem should no longer occur.

One other problem that I’m aware of in the latest release is with automatic configuration URL’s, and the issue appears to be caused by the browser not correctly loading the configuration from these in the first launch. I’ll be checking further into this to see if I can resolve the issue, although a new version will have to wait until after this version is public, as I don’t want to push the release date back any further than it already is.

Edit:

The updated version is available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/1557 (or click here).

There aren’t many changes visible in this release. The only noticeable changes are the removal of the (non-functional) open browser proxy settings button from the preferences page. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to correct this in the current release, but it is still in the pipeline, so if you liked the idea hopefully it will be returning in releases to come. The other minor change was a correction of the German tooltips over the icon, as these were the wrong way around for enabled/disabled.

Underneath there’s really been no major differences, and most of the work was testing in as many situations as possible to hopefully isolate the bugs described that resulted in the proxy always being switched on after a browser restart. During these we were unsuccessful in re-producing the issue, so if anyone does experience it in this version of QuickProxy please let me know with as much detail as possible in your setup.

That’s enough from me, and let’s hope for a smooth release =)

Thank you all for the feedback I’ve received on the extension so far. Apart from these annoying bugs that somehow keep finding their way in it’s been a very positive experience for me.