Formhistory not saved and/or empty database?

Data not stored?

If you experience problems regarding form history not being saved, please check if you have cookies enabled.
This add-on uses IndexedDB to store its information and according to this issue (see bugzilla) disabling cookies will prevent data being stored. So please check the Privacy and Security preferences of the browser and make sure that cookies are accepted or Form History Control will not be able to store your data.

Also note:
Some websites use advanced techniques and frameworks involving javascript that make it virtually impossible to capture user input in a generic way. On request I can add workarounds for popular websites/frameworks, please submit an issue and let me know for which website(s) capturing entries does not work (see Known Issues and github issues)

Empty database?

This add-on now uses the new mandatory WebExtensions API which no longer offers access to Firefox's built-in formhistory database. To overcome this limitation this add-on will create and maintain its own private formhistory database which initially will be empty.

There are two ways to get the formhistory data from the old version back into the new version:

1. If you have an export file from the old version, you can simply import that file into the new version. The exportfile is compatible with the new version.
2. If you have no importfile, you can use a standalone Java application that can export the formhistory data from the old version. You can find this program plus Instructions on my Githib page: https://github.com/stephanmahieu/formhistory-export

Still not working?

Despite rigorous testing on many websites and being a heavy user myself, it is very likely some issues have been overlooked or slipped through. So if you think this add-on is not saving the text you type on a particular website despite the fact you have cookies enabled let me know!
I will gladly investigate any problem you experience and try to figure out what the problem is so I can fix it and improve this add-on. By providing me with feedback you not only help yourself, it will also benefit other users who might run into the same problem.

Bugfixes 2.0.2.2

Some minor bugfixes:

• Tweak column widths in small datatable popup to prevent messed up layout
• Hold page position when updating and redrawing age in datatable
• Rename Wiky.js to wiky.js (fix wiki preview in entryview)
• Small increase (50px) entryview width

Bugfix 2.0.2.1

Bugfix: limit size of columns and preview in the small popup panel

Too much info for the columns so I had to decrease the width of the host and url columns.
Also opening details (with the plus icon) for values with a lot of data caused scrollbars to appear and messed up the layout. So I set a limit for the width and height.

Release 2.0.2.0 Some more small changes

Changes in this release:

• Add url to the tableview, searching now includes the url (someone needed this very bad)
• Added Markdown, Wiki and Text preview to entryview
• Remove inline styles when converting html to readable text
• Escape tooltip text in datatable view (fix values sometimes exceeding max length value column)

Release 2.0.1.0 Some small changes

Some small changes and bugfixes in this release.

• Add additional clickable icons to the small popup
• Copy text to clipboard now preserves HTML formatting
• Hide HTML tags from tableview, show readable text only
• Bugfix restore editor field contextmenu:
  
  • show international chars
  • sort hostname matches by date
  • exclude hostname matches from recent used
• Fix close button preference dialog not always visible

Release 2.0.0.3 Small usability changes

Setting the preference to ON for overriding the default autocomplete with a custom one was a bad mistake on my part. It does not make sense to turn on autocomplete that gets its values from a database that for the vast majority of users is still empty. Only in time, when more formhistory data is collected by the new add-on, does it make sense to switch to the custom autocomplete.

Thus in this version the default override-autocomplete preference is turned off.

B.t.w. The database is initially empty because the new API does not allow access to the builtin Firefox formhistory database. Therefor this add-on will start collecting its own set of formhistory entries.

Also the popup that appears when you left-click the icon (also initially empty because no data collected yet) will now show all entries instead of only the entries applicable to the current active webpage. I believe this is more intuitive.

Changes in this release:

• Show all data in the left-click popup dialog instead of just the fields for the active page (more intuitive)
• Set the override-automplete preference default to false

Release 2.0.0.2 bugfix

Adam reported the following issue via email:

Hello, in my opinion the latest version of the plugin History Form Control does not save textarea eg with gmail etc. The older she saved without problems.

Investigation of this issue revealed that GMail creates/updates an input form dynamically and thus no event handlers were attached to the form to capture user input.
Luckily I found a way to observe mutations made in the DOM tree which gave me a way to attach event-handlers to newly created elements.

After a bit of a struggle and some rigorous testing I came up with a decent solution. Hopefully this fixes all potential problems with dynamically added content.

Release 2.0.0.1 is out!

After a short review by Mozilla, the all new, WebExtension ready and Multiprocess compatible version of Form History Control has finally been released to the public.

Also thanks to the beta testers who tested the pre-releases published in the beta channel over the last couple of days. They gave me the confidence that this version was ready enough to go into production.

Coincidence or not, it took exacltly200 commits to get to this state. It was a tremendous amount of work and I still have plenty of work left on my todo list.

What is new or noteworthy in this almost completely redesigned version:

• The new API no longer offers access to the internal formhistory. This is both a bad and a good thing. The built-in formhistory only stores basic textinput fields and only when submitted in a standard way. I have taken a different approach which hopefully will catch more user-input.
  Each text-input field is stored the moment the field loses focus.Editor fields, which may contain multiple lines of text are captured while you type.
  Since both type of fields are now under my full control, I have chosen to store everything in the same table and also present them to the user in one table.
• The user interface is very different, the new API offers no widgets of any kind, so everything has to be designed from the ground up. For the table display I now use a jquery plugin to do all the hard work.
• Because this plugin now maintains a complete separate registration of captured text-fields, it made sense to also add a custom auto-complete system that is based on the formhistory maintained by this plugin. Since this new auto-complete system may not be to anyone's liking, it can be disabled through the preferences of this add-on.

The new add-on now uses the new mandatory API which no longer offers access to Firefox's built-in formhistory database. To get your old formhistory data into the new add-on you must first export the data using the previous versionof this add-on (1.4.0.6 or earlier) so you can import it into the new version.

Within the next few days I will provide a standalone app that can export the formhistory data from Firefox's database if you have already migrated to the new version.

New pre release (2.0.0pre2)

Just released a new pre release version, 2.0.0pre2

Changes in this pre release:

• Esc-key now closes (modal) dialogs
• Show extra info in header of small popup-window (showing history for current page)
• Redesign context-menus
• Styling preferences (alignment)
• Add Greek translation

First multiprocess/webextension Release

Finally, after many, many, many hours of work I decided that the current state of development was good enough to be released as version 2.0.0beta1 to the Bèta channel.

You can download the bèta release from here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/form-history-control/versions/beta

Be aware that this a a bèta version and may still contain some bugs.

If you are willing to test this version, any feedback is much appreciated.

If you want to transfer your current formhistory to the new version you can do so by first exporting the history from the old version and import them back in after you installed the new bèta version.

It might be wise to test this version first in a separate profile.

To give you an idea of the amount of work: the last 11 weeks I have done 166 commits to the source repository adding 16584 lines of code and deleting 9179 lines.