-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 65
Diffs
The following is a summary of the primary differences of ScrapBook X (1.13.0) with ScrapBook Plus (1.9.24.40) and ScrapBook (1.5.13), if not otherwise specified.
ScrapBook has been powerful and popular since 10 years ago. However, the long-term accumulation of bugs results in a great distress in using it. Debugging is deemed as the top priority of ScrapBook X, to give you back what ought to be experienced in scrapbooking!
The following is a simple list of issues, which have been repaired in ScrapBook X!
-
Page saving:
- The order of the frame pages (
<frame>,<iframe>) are frequently messed up after saved. - New elements and attributes in HTML5 cannot be correctly saved, such as
<audio>,<video>,<source>elements, thesrcsetattribute of<img>, etc. - Some HTML attributes cannot be saved correctly, such as the
background,bgcolor, ortextattribute of a<body>or<table>element. - Some CSS styles cannot be saved correctly, such as a style declaration that contains "content:", a URL containing
', or a URL using data URI scheme. - Contents in an
<xmp>node and its subsequent sibling nodes are not correctly saved. - Save selection gets malformed result if
<pre>or similar tags are involved. - Unable to save a file using the HTTP header defined filename, which causes several issue. For example, a SVG file embeded by a
<img>cannot be displayed if its file extension is not.svg. - The title of the data item is incorrect when a web page on the local device is saved (ScrapBook).
- The "Charset" option does not work for all pages to be saved. (ScrapBook Plus)
- Save link fails if the target is not a web page.
- The favicon gotten from Save link, Deep save, and Save again is sometimes different with the one gotten saved from a direct browse.
- "All Links in the Selection", "All Open Tabs in the Window", and "All Local HTMLs in a Directory" do not work as expected in "Save multiple URLs" (ScrapBook Plus).
- Some HTTP error codes, such as 400, 401, 402, and 502, cannot be recognized in an in-depth/multiple save, which causes an error.
- The Sitemap function doesn't work after an in-depth save (ScrapBook).
- An error occurs for an in-depth save if there is a page linking to the main page.
- A single invoke of "Save again" sometimes causes multiple dialogs prompted.
- Save a page when a saving of page has not been finished causes a conflict and gets an unexpected result.
- The order of the frame pages (
-
Fulltext search:
- Keywords containing some chars, such as
#,%,&,*,=, or+, causes an error of the search engine. (Now they are searched normally.) - A keyword using exclusion and quote rule is mis-recognized as a regular expression. For example, a keyword
-"1.5"excludes pages containing125. - There is not an adequate notice when there's a syntax error in the regular expression input causing an interruption of the search process.
- The separator between the "Folder" and the "HTML" (renamed to "File" in ScrapBook X) fields cannot be dragged for adjustment.
- Frame pages are not indexed properly in certain cases.
- Keywords containing some chars, such as
-
Editor tool:
- Certain operations are not recorded and cannot be undone, such as editing the content of an inline annotation or a sticky annotation. (Now all edit operations can be undone)
- A page reload is triggered if "Don't Save" is selected in the "Page is changed. Save changes?" confirm dialog, causing a permanent loss of the current status.
- Only the last editing operation can be undone. If a second request is given, a "Save changes?" confirm is prompted, in which a "Don't Save" answer causes a loss of the current status, as above mentioned. (Now edit operations can be undone unlimited times.)
- Editing pages alternatively between different tabs results a chaos undo history. (Now the undo history is handled properly in each tab.)
- A source file deletion is caused by an error on saving a page or file. (Now the source is never deleted even if there's an error on saving.)
- A highlight is sometimes drawn on an incorrect range, or on space areas.
- An edit or delete causes a partial change on a highlight or an inline annotation consists of multiple HTML elements by creation on a crossing selection range.
- The sticky annotation is sometimes anchored on an inappropriate HTML element, causing a dislocation after saved and reopened.
- The web page title of a combined page is the title of the first item being combined instead of the one provided (ScrapBook Plus).
- The combine wizard, combine-view, or the "Output HTML tree" gets an an error or a layout-broken output result when there are special chars (such as
&,", or') or syntax (such as a double quote pair or a-->) in the titles, links, or stylesheets in the items being manipulated.
-
Others:
- The command key on Mac doesn't work for many ScrapBook hotkeys.
- Sometimes the new folder is created relative to a previously selected item even if the "Root Folder" is checked in the "Pick Folder" dialog.
- The proper window caption is never provided in the "Before changing the location folder, you should close the window:" error alert.
- When a filtering search is active, deleting a folder do not delete its descendant items properly. They no longer exist in any folder and will not be cleared until deactivating the filtering search and deleting some other items. (Since the version fixing this issue, items not deleted properly before can be detected and deleted via the "Calaulate" dialog)
- A correct sorting result is not obtained from the initial run and must be obtained by switching column sorting repeatedly in the Import/Export Manager, the "Calculate" dialog, and so on.
- HTML special chars (such as
&,", and') or consecutive spaces cannot be rendered properly sometimes by Combine page, Combined-view, Output HTML tree, or so. - The ScrapBook directory path cannot be changed until restarting Firefox if a bad path causing an error has been used.
One of the most important changes in ScrapBook X is adding the HTML Editor button in the editor toolbar. When activated, the web page content becomes completely editable, and commands, which and whose corresponding hotkeys are listed in the context menu, for modifying format, inserting links, inserting files, etc, becomes available.
Other improvements of the editor functions include:
-
Strengthened the DOM Eraser, which, besides "remove" with left click and "isolate" with right click, can now do "wider", "narrower", "de-width", "black on white", "undo", etc, to kick off the redundant elements with ease, as what HackTheWeb or Aardvark does.
-
Added the inner link function: ScrapBook X data items can now be linked with each other easily. Select a link target in the sidebar, run "Attach Inner Link to Selection" in the annotation tools menu in editor toolbar, where the ID of the target item shall show if selected correctly, click "ok", and the link is created.
-
Replaced the sticky annotation with freenotes, where a text annotation in HTML can be written in.
-
Increased the number of the available highlight tools to 8.
-
The highlighter in button mode is no more supported, to prevent some problems. (ScrapBook Plus)
-
The eraser tools and the DOM Eraser now deletes all ScrapBook-added "notes", including highlights, annotations, attached links, and so on, rather than deletes only highlights.
-
New feature: middle-click on the eraser tool button to delete ScrapBook notes in the selection.
-
New feature: view the directory of the current page by clicking on the icon next to the title of the editor or info toolbar.
Another of the most important changes in ScrapBook X is adding the note page, which can be created in the sidebar or the "Manage" windows and automatically enters the HTML edit mode (can be turned off in the preference options). Note pages are extremely useful for clipping, editing, and re-organizing the contents from web pages or elsewhere.
Images or multimedia copied from web pages or applications are usually stored on the web or in a temporary directory, and could be lost easily. A feature "Internalize" is available for note pages to actually save them into the ScrapBook data directory, so that they wouldn't be lost anymore.
Note pages have their template customizable (via the notex_template.html in the ScrapBook directory), are more precisely to be indexed, and are very suitable for taking notes freely.
On the other hand, the legacy notes now supports plain text only, so that special chars no more causes an annoying unexpected HTML format rendering when pasted into.
Besides, some functions useful for knowledge management are added:
-
Non-folder-type folders: ScrapBook X now can convert a non-folder-type item into a "folder" so that other items can be moved inside it, while it still owns its content and can be fulltext-searched.
-
Lock item: for files with special importance or with an intension to have native HTML codes kept, right-clicking on an item in the ScrapBook sidebar and lock it using the property dialog, and they wouldn't be edited or saved by ScrapBook anymore. (You can still open the data directory and edit the source files with other applications)
-
Copy item: which is useful for duplicating an item for further processing for different purposes.
ScrapBook X is committed to optimize the data format to fit the international standard, to have the best compatibility, and to be accessed on any platform.
-
Expanded file name support: cases and more non-ASCII chars are preserved when a page is saved, and filenames are truncated if they are too long, to prevent problems related with long file names.
-
Support for subdirectories: the data directory of a data item can now include subdirectories, and no more causes an error on a calculate, a delete, or another ScrapBook operation. This makes copying data files into ScrapBook easier.
-
Support for XHTML: XHTML pages (with file extension like .xhtml, .xht, or so) are saved as standards-compliant XHTML rather than being converted into HTML. (You can save them as HTML by using "Save non-HTML file as HTML".)
-
Source rewrite is avoided: source rewrite during an operation of saving, noting, combining, exporting HTML tree, etc., is minimized. And the output format is adjusted to fit HTML5 standard better.
-
Form status recording is avoided: the current status and values of the form are no more saved when the page is saved due to a privacy concern.
-
Data is more cross-platform compliant: new freenotes and combined pages via the combine wizard are independent of ScrapBook internal stylesheets and can be browsed properly in a platform other than Firefox with ScrapBook.
-
Notes are now differentiated with the source content more explicitly: ScrapBook X notes, including highlights, annotations, or attached links are added a data-sb-obj attribute, can be differentiated with the source content clearly, and can be completely removed without leaving anything by "Clear all ScrapBook Notes" in the eraser tools.
-
More save detail options:
- Added options to determine whether to download media, fonts, or frames.
- Added an option "Process CSS": The legacy ScrapBook automatically tidies CSS and removes all declarations not supported by Firefox or not applied to the web page elements, which could make the page not presented correctly when viewed in a different browser. ScrapBook X provides more options to process the CSS, such as rewriting links only.
- Added an option "Save data URI as file": when this option has been checked, a data URI is saved as a normal file, which is named as the SHA1 checksum of its content so that data URIs with identical content won't be duplicatedly saved.
- Added an option "Save non-HTML file as HTML": when this option has been checked, a plain text file, image file, XHTML page, or XML file transformed to HTML via an XSLT, etc., is saved in HTML format, which is nice for latter editing and taking notes.
- "Download linked files" now supports filtering file extensions using regular expressions, and can be configured to detect HTTP header defined file extension.
-
Greatly improved the user interface of Output HTML tree:
- Added a button to expand/collapse all items.
- Added a small arrow to mak the expanded/collapsed status of a folder.
- Added a link to the source url for each data items.
- Every separators now shows its title.
- A fixed link URL with hash is available for linking to the current browsed page in the framed index.
- Added a search page so that fulltext searching is available without ScrapBook.
- Allows customizing the style and the script of the index and search pages of "Output HTML tree" via
tree/custom.cssandtree/custom.js. The style file has been renamed totree/index.cssfromtree/output.css, and updates automatically on every output.
ScrapBook X improved the fulltext search engine and the manage interface, making data finding easier.
-
Improved the search syntax of fulltext and filtering search. Commands like
title:,create:,re:are available for a more detailed search condition. A literal double quote inside a double quoted term can be represented with two double quotes. -
The fulltext search engine now indexes and searches bookmarks and plain-text-like files.
-
The fulltext search engine now excludes separators from the search result.
-
The fulltext search result are now sortable.
-
The fulltext search highlighting now works for regular expression terms.
-
Reworked legacy "List View" (in ScrapBook Plus), which now lists all data items (excluding folders) in the "Manage" window, and can be sorted.
-
ScrapBook X now records the creation and modification dates. It's easy to find "recently added", "recently modified", etc., items by taking the advantages of the new List View and the sorting features.
ScrapBook X improved the user interface, making it more convenient to use.
-
Improved the tooltips and user interface of the main menu button, the toolbar button, the context menu, the editor toolbar, etc. Many error messages are also localized.
-
Removed the status menu and integrated it into the dropdown list in the toolbar button. Removed the "Sitemap" and the "Open Source URL" buttons from it (to prevent a possible misunderstanding and to reduce redundant items, since they are more likely called from elsewhere).
-
Improved the cross-platform support of hotkeys. For example, on Mac the command key now works correctly and keys are shown in Mac style.
-
Improved save related user interface:
- Save detail configs are now recorded in the user preferences, a non-detail save now uses last used values automatically. The default values for a new save can also be configured from Options dialog.
- Save selection now supports multiple ranges. You can select multiple ranges in the web page by holding Ctrl and use Save selection to save them at once.
- Improved the user interface of Save dialog: A context menu with "Check/uncheck selected items" is added. The Pause, Skip, Abort buttons also work more user-friendly.
-
Improved the Option dialog: it can now be resized freely, shortcut combinations cau be configured more flexibly, the options can be exported and imported, and several new options are added:
- "Show notification on browsing a page having been saved", which makes ScrapBook to prompt an alert if you are browsing a web page that is already saved.
- "Automatically output tree as HTML when data is changed", which makes ScrapBook to output the HTML tree at an appropriate time if there's a change in the database.
-
Multi-ScrapBook is now permanently active: and related unnecessary options are removed and related user interface issues are fixed.
-
Improved the sidebar and Manage window:
- The data tree is now automatically focused when the sidebar is toggled open.
- Adjusted some mouse and keyboard behavior: For example, the space can be used to open an item, and Ctrl/Shift+Enter no more toggles a folder.
- Items added to the sidebar now are placed at a more intuitive place.
- A new item can be created in the child hierarchy by holding shift or ctrl key.
- Each item in the combined view now has its height adjusted by it content.
- Operations such as move, delete, etc., in the "Manage" window are no more limited to selecting a single folder.
- The answer of the confirm dialog for deleting an item now defaults to "No", to decrease a risk of mis-deletion.
- Sort dialog can now sort using the creation or modify time, and a "Group by Type" option is added.
- The item folder path is now displayed in the "Properties" dialog.
- The item property dialog now allows changing the charset. You can change it to match the data content if it's not UTF-8 encoded (more likely happens on txt files), to make sure that the fulltext search engine work correctly for it.
- Folder paths are now separated with a less confusing char in the export manager.
- New export manager option "Export folder items", which makes each folder be exported like a normal data item, to preserve its information such as data and comment.
-
Improved the user interface of Combine Wizard:
- Dropping a folder now adds its subitems into the combine list.
- The "move up", "move down", and "delete" buttons now behaves more natural.
- Added Alt+Up, Alt+Down, and Delete keyboard shortcuts.
- The warn message no more pop up repeatedly.
-
"Calculate" now checks for more problems, such as items with missing or redundant data directory and items with missing index.html file. Viewing the properties for invalid items is now available.
-
The namespace of the preferences moved from "scrapbook" to "extensions.scrapbook", to fit the Firefox protocol.
-
Localization files per language is reduced to 2 to make translation easier.