Autoform - Automatic Form Control |
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Welcome to the Autoform Extension Homepage... This extension is not developed anymore actively. However, the existing extension can serve as a useful little helper if you have to repetively enter huge amount of form data. This is mainly used by web developers while developing and testing their web applications and not by normal users. FAQWhat features are implemented so far?Autoform can load and save form data to a configurable context. It offers virtual user support, password encryption with DES3. The way how automatic form load and save events occurs can be configured in many ways. It works in many cases very well, but if the parsed html code has errors or is generated dynamically with javascript, it will not work. How has it started?I started developing this extension, beacuse I needed to always fill in the same form data while developing large registration processes. It saved me many hours (or even weeks) in my daily work. After finishing the first version, I tought it could be also useful for others and so I released it here on mozdev.org. Why did you stop it?The interest in the extension was very big and I received a lot of emails with ideas for more features and also bug reports. So the extension growed and I implemented also features which I didn't use by myself (and so didn't test very proper). After some time I had better experience with the used technologies like XUL, Javascript and XPCOM, and the Firefox API was final after some changes before 1.0. Looking backwards I did many things in a way I wouldn't do it nowadays. With the growing of the code it was getting more unreadable and ugly until it is now almost unmaintainable. The time I spent was almost half an hour every day to response to emails and some hours every week for reading and coding. With the release of Firefox 1.0 and it's growing popularity, many users installed autoform and wrote me nasty emails complaining that it's not working fine. At the beginning I took it very seriously and supported they, finding bad html code on sites, bad configuration or simply not read the help file. With the birth of my second child, I decided to better spend more time with my family instead of coding all night long for other people - so I stopped autoform. Do you plan to rewrite it?Yes, I already started a new plugin with a very clean codebase. The new way is more java like (which is my favour programming language) and uses javascript inheritance to separate concerns very clearly. With the design to code will be maintainable and will be a good basis for further development of new features. When can I excpect the new plugin?I don't want to make a statement about a release date, since I don't want to have any pressure and don't want to disappoint users excepting it. Can I help to develop the new version?Yes, please read the information here |
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