[Support] Brief

Do you want this to be a permanent setting? I’ve been thinking about making it easy to reverse the current view… maybe that would be better?

Yes here
1
or here
2
or both if it’s possible

автору привет. дайте пожалуйста реальную инструкцию как настроить по CSS, одно работает, другое нет, методом тыка вставлял разные куски кода, растянул наконец-то по ширине. хочу дальше покастомизировать))

В идеале нужно понять хотя бы общие принципы CSS - что такое селектор (строчка, определяющая, на какие элементы действует правило), что такое свойства. Простые вещи вроде цвета заголовка делаются по принципу “загуглить свойство CSS для цвета текста; кликнуть нужный элемент правой кнопкой, выбрать Inspect Element и попробовать задать нужное свойство; посмотреть, что это за элемент и где он, и написать подходящий селектор”. Для более сложных, например, изменения размеров нужно понимать, каким образом определяются размеры элементов, так что тут придётся поискать туториалы или смотреть на элементы в инспекторе и изучать методом тыка.

я по f12 в Firefox в стилях вытащил код, слегка поправил цвета под мою оболочку, вроде норм. Хотел раздвинуть контейнер, который названия форумов отображает, в строчном виде, не нашел … тыкнете если, - заранее спасибо

Among others I have added this feed with daily update. But I get a cookie from that domain every few minutes. There is no other connection to that domain but via Brief, no tab open, no other extension. All other feeds only get cookies at the scheduled update.
How can that domain set a cookie every few minutes?
https://www.polizei-praevention.de/home.html?type=100

Where can I find a link to Brief 2.4.0 ?

I found a page of old versions, but it only goes back to 2.5.0
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brief/versions/

I’m looking for 2.4.0 so I can use it with Waterfox.

@LarryK I’ve put it on the 2.4.0 Github page. However, you may want to check whether later versions actually work (Waterfox seems to support WebExtensions too).

@bege10 Sorry for being late. Unfortunately, I don’t see any special properties that page would have. Does it still behave that way in case you still use Brief?

Re: frequent cookies
I was not correct with the update frequency, it is every several hours. Other pages with that frequency showed the same behavior. They all work correct with Feedbro. So it is not an issue of the pages but perhaps of Brief with update frequency in hours range. Brief seems to check too often.

I remember that in old versions briefs still worked in private mode, now it is not possible, at least not in my case, when I am in private mode and I open the brief tab, nothing is shown.

Is this for privacy reasons? or is there any way to enable it also firefox private mode?

Note that Brief fetches the items in non-private mode anyway. Given that, I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea to allow reading them in “private”.

That being said, at the moment this is not an intentional limitation, but some internal technical problem. Off the top of my head I’m not sure how much time would fixing that require.

Since a recent Firefox update forced me to create a new FF profile, Brief no longer believes any RSS feeds are there, although the folder with the bookmarks is present, and there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting it to load bookmarks from the folder.

Brief has no access to these bookmarks for some years already (if the data is even still there, which I’m not sure about).

Firefox should have exported your live bookmarks as an opml file when the live bookmark support was dropped, and you can import that. However, note that new feeds added in recent years will not be there.

Alternatively, you can copy the Brief database from the old profile’s default storage (when Firefox is not running) or export the feed list in the old profile and import in the new one.

OK, so there’s a JavaScript file in ./browser-extension-data/brief@mozdev.org in the old profile (call it profile A) that on examination in a text editor contains RSS feeds. Suspiciously old and declaring a weird file type (MIGRATED), but RSS feeds.

Let’s copy it to the new profile (call it profile B).

That path does not exist in profile B, although Brief is installed and its .xpi is there in profile B’s /extensions/ folder.

But! there is also a mystery new profile C! which does have /browser-extension-data/ ! let’s copy the file into it!

restart FF. no feeds. ho hum.

Close, but not that one. You need to open about:debugging and look up Brief’s UUID in both profiles (it will be different). The main Brief database is in the old profile in ./storage/default/moz-extension+++$OLD_UUID/idb/*bfrei.sqlite (not sure about the number in the filename whether it’s the same or not). I’d try placing it into the respective place in the new profile (with the new UUID, of course).

right, the *bfrei number is the same. done, no effect. presumably there is some other layer of complexity and the db is cached elsewhere?

further, copied over all the files in the /files subfolder next to it. brief is now just unresponsive.

I have opened another profile and extracted an OPML from May 2020. But I would rather not have data thrown away. I have identified the various folders by UUID and transferred everything (inc /cache and METADATA files) over. Brief is still not just without feeds, but broken.

Here’s debugging output:

The Components object is deprecated. It will soon be removed. regex.js:12:20

Initializing the feed request monitor request-monitor.js:2:13

Brief: opening database in persistent storage database.js:138:17

The ‘storage’ attribute in options passed to indexedDB.open is deprecated and will soon be removed. To get persistent storage, please use navigator.storage.persist() instead. database.js:148:31

Found no database in persistent storage database.js:162:29

Brief: opening database in default storage with upgrade database.js:138:17

Error opening database: UnknownError The operation failed for reasons unrelated to the database itself and not covered by any other error code. database.js:167:25

Uncaught (in promise)TypeError: this._db is null

loadFeeds moz-extension://b787ebe5-d8b9-4406-8402-3a217e5d450d/modules/database.js:305

init moz-extension://b787ebe5-d8b9-4406-8402-3a217e5d450d/modules/database.js:90

database.js:305:18

extension is undefined 4 ExtensionParent.jsm:321

Brief: opening database in default storage database.js:138:17

Error opening database: UnknownError The operation failed for reasons unrelated to the database itself and not covered by any other error code. database.js:167:25

_open moz-extension://b787ebe5-d8b9-4406-8402-3a217e5d450d/modules/database.js:167

Uncaught (in promise)TypeError: this._db is null

loadFeeds moz-extension://b787ebe5-d8b9-4406-8402-3a217e5d450d/modules/database.js:305

init moz-extension://b787ebe5-d8b9-4406-8402-3a217e5d450d/modules/database.js:90

After installing Brief, how do I open it? There is an icon in the address bar, but apparently it is only for subscribing.

If you’ve just installed Brief in a recent Firefox version, it’s likely available in the extensions list behind the extensions “puzzle piece” button next to the Firefox menu button.