Color picker doesn't work-no saved color, default color setting gone from new version-I lost all previous highlights with default color, inconsistent color numbers between versions, no highlights appear
Hi,
Sorry for the longer title I just wished to note several but cohesive errors
"Color picker doesn't work-no saved color, default color setting gone from new version-I lost all previous highlights with default color, inconsistent color numbers between versions, no highlights appear in new version"
I'm using Firefox 123.00 and MEMEX 3.8.35 because I haven't time yet to look after the tremendous changes in the new version, which Chrme updates automatically.
Unfortunately, that is a bit difficult to revert the Chrome version to being same version as Firefox, and keeps not automatically updating.
I noticed when I returned the following errors;
1. The color picker doesn't work in either of the versions. There is no color saved.
The former version had the default (green) color in the Setting which I guess was numbered 0. color, but there is no such in the new version THUS I LOST ALL PREVIOUS HIGHLIGHTs marked with this default color.
There is an inconsistency between the color numbering between the two versions, which might result if I marked in the former version e.g. blue 1 which is blue 0 in the new version the highlights will not appear.
I need to use both browsers, thus this version difference or at least inconsistency between versions in a crucial function might become frustrating.
Thanks for looking after.
screenshot
Comments17
Oliver Sauter
Feb 27, 2024
Thanks for reporting this will investigate now!
Though rest assured your data should be fine, as the highlight color ID is stored in the annotation as a placeholder, so this means once that is fixed it's either just working again or you have to just change the highlight color of the placeholder options and all the previously colored highlights wth the same color will also have the same color again.
Oliver Sauter
Feb 27, 2024
However, one thing that is HIGHLY recommended is keeping your extension up to date. We are still in beta and such vastly different version can produce unintended side effects. The version you are on is so old and had multiple data model changes behind.
Anonymous User
Mar 2, 2024
Hi.
I understand. But perhaps you need to...you are on rapid changes and not everyone can understand your rapidly changing data models, even I who am mainly a developer vein people. I'm working on many else things. Your changelog here is very poor and reports only the bigger milestones of changes that are mainly from the marketing aspect (Sorry.) - in contrast with what some developers maintain delicately regarding their issues and resolves in e.g. Github - following what truly changed between versions in the meantime.
I am simply not able to follow clearly what changed and your product is very sophisticated. There needs time to understand test and try the new features.
I mainly use Firefox, and I used to update extensions only when I had time to look at what the new Releases meant and offered to me, and I can revert if the older version worked best. I basically do not give up on what has already worked for me. Firefox allows its extension updates to be decided by the user, Chrome does not. It is its biggest disadvantage for me e.g. between some of the other ones.
Oliver Sauter
Mar 7, 2024
Thanks for the feedback. I will make sure to have a better change log. In the mean time I still highly recommend updating your extension to the latest version on Firefox - we are also constantly fixing bugs and it's only getting better with those updates.
Anonymous User
Mar 7, 2024
Hi, thank you for your answer. See my reply regarding to this at my last comment
Anonymous User
Mar 2, 2024
Thanks for the answer. I do not know really why this issue has not been approved and your answer too has not appeared to me until just today albeit I see you wrote it 4 days ago. (Seeing the changelog or bug reports in either browser.)
I have written a new issue about this today in which I tried to better explain my problem and completely regarded this issue.
Anyway,
I do not understand your above answer.
>...means once that is fixed it's either just working again or you have to just change the highlight color of the placeholder options
How do you mean this, I may be a little 'stupid' :)
> you have to just change the highlight color of the placeholder options
How?
Thank you for helping me.
Anonymous User
Mar 2, 2024
Sorry, I did not understand > you have to just change the highlight color of the placeholder options...
I suppose you mean 'color of the placeholder options' is where the 5 colors setting can be set or changed and if I change one of them to the original default green color I probably get back my previous highlights.
If this is the case, I already tried that. But, as I reported above the colors can not be changed, because there is no color saved, and the placeholder remains empty. See the screenshot. (But there I actually did not try to set the green color that was my earlier attempt.)
Oliver Sauter
Mar 7, 2024
I mean with this that once the "UI" bug is fixed, your data is fine, all the color associations you made previously to the annotations is still the same as we are storing placeholders in the data (like "one" "two") instead of the actual colors.
This means you can then just redo your setting.
The way you can work around it for now is:
Upgrade your firefox extension so it does not cause issues anymore.
Go to chrome://extensions > enable developer mode > memex > background page > application > indexedDB > Memex > "settings" table > "highlightColors.highlightColors" select it and click on "Delete selected".
Careful here though to not click on "delete all".
Reload a page with annotations twice (the first time will reset the colors and you won't see the highlight)
Then you can change the colors back to what you had them set up with and you're fine. All the annotations that had that color placeholder attached to it will have the color again.
Anonymous User
Mar 7, 2024
Hi,
Thank you for your answer.
>The way you can work around it for now is:
Upgrade your Firefox extension so it does not cause issues anymore.
I think, if I upgrade now Firefox to the latest version to be the same as the Chrome version until UI bugs are fixed, you wrote >I mean with this that once the "UI" bug is fixed,...
I will lose all the highlights that worked well until at least in the 3.8.5 release in Firefox. At best I won't use this version to cause more inconsistency, I mean I won't do further highlights in that version. But I do not want risk to upgrading this Firefox version to the latest if the UI does not work well yet in the latest version because I need to reach out and see at least these previously made highlights at least in Firefox.
I do even yet not understand what you explained albeit, I followed your instructions in Chrome,
2. Go to chrome://extensions > enable developer mode > memex > background page > application > indexedDB > Memex > "settings" table > "highlightColors.highlightColors"
but I could not see
"settings" table > "highlightColors.highlightColors", however, I found "annotation" table and 'color' field. The list there only contains or seems to contain only those highlights that I made in Firefox recently in the previous release between the color inconsistency came in the newer version (supposing because the default color Settings had been removed in the newer version and the colors numbering became inconsistent), however, I can not see here all my previous highlights, and those also do not appear in the new version.
See the screenshot.
It seems to me a bit risky to tweak this by hand :( Thus I truly do not know what to do.
Could not resolve the problem if you put back (revert) to the newest version of the default green color settings be selectable with key number 0?
Anonymous User
Mar 7, 2024
Oliver,
I won't go deeper into the details, but I looked at how the data model looks in Firefox older Memex version.
Simply I can say there were truly changes in the data model between versions.
See my screenshot taken in Firefox
Let me say and please do not take it as a criticism much rather only a remark. I was formerly a developer and an architect, (I have not dealt with that now, but) thus I have some understanding of the development life cycle and release management. Also, we were very careful about making changes, especially in the data model, regarding the table field structure and how to maintain backward compatibility with former versions.
We used to notify our users what to do how to upgrade to the next version and why if we made a major change very especially because of the data model change and if we ceased to maintain further backward compatibility.
Because your product is very sophisticated (but truly very promisingly the best annotation tool with huge features thus), and complex to learn and re-learn when new features are added or the previously accustomed UI elements have changed also to follow these changes even for one who is experienced and has probably had developer's vein.
So please yes, >I will make sure to have a better change log. It would be more than needed in the case of this very clever and feature-reach product.
Oliver Sauter
Mar 13, 2024
On your feedback: It's ok to criticise - even encouraged so thanks for your feedback.
To be honest we didn't anticipate that people fall back so much in the version and didn't catch the bug in our testing when testing with version upgrades.
And again, I think if you update to the latest Firefox version you should be fine and your annotation colors will work again.
As you can see in the annotations table there are the "color" codes which are placeholders so that means you can change the colors in the picker however you want, your old order still persists. "one" is the original "color 1" and so forth. The "default" or "null" are just the fall backs in case there is no color set.
Oliver Sauter
Mar 13, 2024
Hey there! The reason you are not seeing your highlights there is because they are not captured by that index. They should all be synced over if you go to the "annotations" main bullet point. Those annotations dont show up here because their color value is null.
Can you share a screenshot of the "settings" table with me? if you use the openAI api key make sure to not show that one in the screenshot here bc it is saved in that table too.