I've updated the OPML Support for Firefox extension to be compatible with the latest Firefox 3 (Minefield) alphas.

The compatibility changes were more than just bumping the maxVersion, since Firefox 3's bookmark and history architecture has been completely reworked as Places, but the awesome new FUEL project (Firefox User Extension Library) is an incredible asset, especially when working with bookmark data.

For the low, low price of $189,900, you could own this piece of Web software history:

This is the very building where I worked on such projects as Slashdotter, Netscape Navigator 9, OPML Support for Firefox, ScribeFire, the Digg Top Users list, and most recently, Twits Like Me. If you act now, I'll even throw in the very desk that I sit at while I work my programming magic. Deals like this don't come along every day, especially when you consider that I was named as Time Magazine's 2006 Man of the Year!

This introductory pricing won't last long, so you'd better hurry up and make an offer.

I've released version 1.3 of OPML Support for Firefox.

This version includes full support for multibyte and other non-ASCII characters, so importing and exporting files with Japanese, Chinese, or any accented characters should work now. Thanks to Hisateru Tanaka for his contribution to this fix.

Also included in version 1.3 are a Japanese translation (thanks again Hisateru) as well as Korean and German translations. You can download the update at the OPML Support homepage or just press the "Find Updates" button in the Firefox addons dialog.

After a series of delays, the new Mozilla Addons site (codenamed Remora) went live late last night. Changes to the site include redesigned visual aspects, localization, and an overhauled discussion/comment system, but probably the biggest change you'll notice is that new extensions do not undergo a mandatory approval process before being available for download.

As extensions are uploaded, they are relegated to the "Sandbox." This means that while they won't appear in search results or under their respective categories, the author can still take advantage of Mozilla's free add-on hosting by pointing users directly to their add-on's download page. Sandboxed addons can be nominated for general availability by requesting an editor review, but according to Mozilla, this should be reserved for addons that are of use to the general population and enhance the Web browsing experience, and I fully agree. We don't need the site cluttered with hundreds of "gam3rHax.com Forum Toolbar" extensions that are only used by their author.

As far as my extensions go, ScribeFire and URL Fixer have been deemed public-worthy, and I've nominated OPML Support. I'll probably leave the others (Slashdotter, GoogleTabs) in the sandbox, as they're not really what I consider "general use."

Update: It looks like the site has been rolled back to its previous state; I can't determine why, but the Mozilla Webdev blog will probably post an update. You can still check out Remora at the Mozilla Addons Preview site.

I've updated OPML Support to include keywords in the exported file so that if you import back into Firefox, your shortcut URLs should be intact. Grab the new version (1.2.1) at either Mozilla Addons or my personal site.

Just noticed from my referrer logs that Google is linking to my OPML Support for Firefox extension from its Google Reader FAQ. Neat.

I've just updated all of my extensions to be compatible with Firefox 2.0. They're all available for download at my site, and they'll all eventually be available at Mozilla Addons as well. No new features for these updates, just compatibility fixes.

I�ve updated the OPML XSL stylesheet that I mentioned a while back. It now creates collapsable folders, has icons for feeds vs. links, and allows you to open all links in a folder by double-clicking on the folder name. It works for me in both Internet Explorer 6 and the major Mozilla browsers.

You can download it or see it in action. I like the new functionality, but I�m not sure if maybe the older simpler version was actually nicer.

Note: the stylesheet uses images hosted on my website, so if you are going to use it, grab grab a zip of the images. The stylesheet expects them to be in /images/.

As much as I love XML files and the way that browsers display them with their little plus and minus toggles, a file is no good to me unless I can read and utilize the data it contains. So while OPML is great for storing link and feed data, I can't really navigate an OPML file the same way I could a browser-generated quasi-HTML bookmarks file.

Thinking that someone else had to have run up against this problem by now, I was somewhat surprised when I couldn't find any easily-accessible XSLT for transforming OPML to HTML; there was one page that everyone was linking to, but it is apparently MIA. There was also a page that dealt with creating an HTML blogroll from an OPML file, but I wanted something that would handle nested folders, HTML links, and RSS feeds.

So keeping that in mind, I present for your approval a stylesheet for transforming OPML files into cleanly presented lists of links and feeds (in HTML). My bookmarks are an example of a transformed file; the only change needed was to add the reference to the stylesheet at the top of the OPML file. So check it out, but don't pay any attention to the folders full of Care Bears links. Those are for some, uh, research I'm doing...

So I finished the major changes I had in mind for the OPML Support extension. I added support for regular bookmarks, a few options (whether to import/export livemarks, bookmarks, or both; option to import/export livemarks as regular bookmarks; option to import/export nested vs. flat), and a few bug fixes.

If you've had problems in the past with OPML files that OPML Support creates being non-valid XML, download the new version, which has a much stricter check for illegal characters in link titles and descriptions.