[Support] Brief

Hi ! :slight_smile:

Some questions:

  1. Can icons be SVG not PNG (or smaller PNG as variant) ?

  2. How can user make smaller fonts in menu in left panel and in right panel ?

  3. Can user change folder to storage brief.sqlite ?

Hi,

will Brief be making the transition with FF57 to the WebExtension API?

Yes, I’m working on migrating Brief to WebExtensions.

@phantom, @nick222, sorry, I’m too busy with this transition right now.

My Brief extension stopped working. We had a brown-out which cut off power to my computer as I was using Firefox, and when everything was back on and working, Brief just gave me a blank interface: the basic words are there (Refresh, Organize, Options, All Items, Today, Bookmarks, Trash) but none of them do anything when I click on them – even Options gives me no response at all.

I upgraded to FF 56.0, hoping it would help, but nothing changed.

Yet the “Feeds” folder in my Bookmarks still shows all my subscribed feeds!

Is this a “Legacy” issue that will be fixed by migration? Or is this just some corruption that happened to me?

Apparently the crash had corrupted my brief.sqlite file. I completely removed Brief from Firefox, deleted all the old Brief-related files, reinstalled Brief, exited Firefox, and then copied my last-known-good backup of brief.sqlite over the new one. At that point it worked again.

I had to manually re-subscribe to each of my old feeds, but once I did that, it correctly accessed the history of each feed from my old brief.sqlite file. Problem solved!

Really appreciating your efforts to make the the WE! However, there seems to be something wrong with the update to 2.4.0., or sorts. At least my end the feeds are not showing in the main window albeit being updated in the side panel. That is in W7 64bit as well as on Linux 64bit with FF 56.0.2

Unable to reproduce that on Linux 64-bit with any of Nightly 58, Firefox 56.0, Firefox 52.2.1. Could you please open the browser console with Ctrl+Shift+J and check for errors when opening the Brief tab?

Alternatively, are there any special details I should know? Do you store entries indefinitely or up to some limit? With a huge database the initial migration after upgrade may take a few minutes.

I keep the database tiny/tidy, cleaning up frequently. From the consosole

Brief: extension startup bootstrap.js:241
TypeError: Brief.window is null[Learn More] bootstrap.js:138:13
Note: Brief - callbacks aborted due to refresh feedview.js:884:13
Note: Brief - callbacks aborted due to refresh feedview.js:884:13
Note: Brief - callbacks aborted due to refresh feedview.js:884:13
InvalidStateError: A mutation operation was attempted on a database that did not allow mutations. 87:72
keyPathToRefPath/< https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/support-brief/6514/87:72:23
reduce self-hosted:366:27
keyPathToRefPath https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/support-brief/6514/87:62:20
blockFeatureAtKeyPath https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/support-brief/6514/87:152:34
forEach self-hosted:269:13
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/support-brief/6514/87:191:9
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/support-brief/6514/87:8:2
moz-extension://276d6830-c431-4a45-a87c-ccd7f1b9e15c/content_scripts/instrument.js:58:5
moz-extension://276d6830-c431-4a45-a87c-ccd7f1b9e15c/content_scripts/instrument.js:5:2
inject resource://gre/modules/ExtensionContent.jsm:339:18
next self-hosted:1183:9

Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Note: Brief - callbacks aborted due to refresh feedview.js:884:13
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
Note: Brief - callbacks aborted due to refresh feedview.js:884:13
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
NS_BASE_STREAM_CLOSED: Component returned failure code: 0x80470002 (NS_BASE_STREAM_CLOSED) [nsIInputStream.available] FeedUpdateService.jsm:575
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
Note: Brief - callbacks aborted due to refresh feedview.js:884:13
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9
RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52
Saved feed list with 24 feeds database.js:187:9

RangeError: invalid language tag: feedview.js:958:52

This looks like a likely reason. Do you have any add-ons for language change, or some other weird language configuration? Could you please open a debug console with F12, enter navigator.language and show the value it shows there?

no add-on impacting the brower’s language settings. There was not trouble with the previous version of Brief, happened only after the update to 2.4.0. From the debug console:

navigator.language
""

Ok, either this is a weird Firefox bug, or something is intentionally hiding the preferred language. Any kind of privacy protecting add-ons installed?

Reckon it is not a FF bug. I have intentionally removed any sort of preferred language from the FF settings (if that is what you are referring to).

ff language

Yeah, that’s it, tested and confirmed it happens when there are no preferred languages. This is a weird configuration; AFAIK, according to both the WHATWG html standard and the W3C html5 standard the navigator.language property must always return a valid language tag. Probably I should report this as a Firefox bug.

Note that this nonstandard configuration is rather bad for privacy as there are only a few users with this kind of configuration and they are pretty noticeable.

I’ve opened an issue report about this problem.

Perhaps a two-sided sword - concur that with fingerprinting it makes it stand out, however one may prefer not to be told by websites/search engines with language/location to be used - but that is another topic.

What is a bit disconcerting for me as user of Brief is that with the update to 2.4.0 suddenly the extention is getting curious about the language settings, whilst previous versions apparently did fine without. I do not see the extention’s dependency on the user’s preferred language settings in the browser?

Brief chooses the appropriate date and time format for displaying the entries’ publication date according to the preferred language. Versions before 2.4.0 used to do the same, but in a slightly different way that have been deprecated by Mozilla. There should probably be some fallback to a default locale, however.

Aside from setting a preferred language in the browser what would you suggest (feeds piling up and I cannot read them) - downgrade to the previous Brief version, if that is feasible? Or look for another feed reader instead, not knowing whether/when it will be fixed?

It is curious that the API should make the diffirence in Brief’s date/time format, considering that the browser’s language settings ("") were the same previously - how did Brief < 2.4.0 determine the appropriate date/time settings then?

It is curious that the API should make the diffirence in Brief’s date/time format, considering that the browser’s language settings ("") were the same previously - how did Brief < 2.4.0 determine the appropriate date/time settings then?

It was using date.toLocaleFormat(...), which is deprecated since Firefox 55 and removed in Firefox 58.

brief отключили после последнего обновления firefox, соответственно все ленты пропали. есть ли возможность их восстановить, и на будущее есть ли в brief опция бэкапа?

Brief скоро вернётся, и (если последняя версия до отключения была 2.4) подхватит старые ленты сам (если данные не удаляет Firefox, на что я очень надеюсь). Вообще восстановить можно из brief.sqlite, но готового кода для этого у меня нет.