Extension no longer allows customization?

[tsnicholas]

I don't know where else to report this, so I'll just report it here. I had the extension customized to show the green-red variant of the like/dislike ratio and for it to appear on the top of videos. Recently, it randomly reverted to using the default settings and whenever I change it and refresh the page, it doesn't change from the default settings anymore. Is this an intentional design choice going forward or a bug? I'm not sure, but I figured I might as well report it anyway.

[elliotwaite]

Thanks for reporting this. This is a bug. The customization settings should still work.

I am not able to reproduce this issue on my system (macOS and Chrome). What operating system and browser are you using?

Can you follow these steps and let me know what happens?

• Open the extension settings window by clicking the extension icon.
• Set "Position: Top".
• Set "Colors: Green / Red".
• Click the blue "SAVE" button.
• Close the extension settings window by clicking outside the settings window.
• Refresh the YouTube page to see if the new settings are applied.
  • Does YouTube show the new settings ("Position: Top" and "Colors: Green / Red") or the default settings ("Position: Bottom" and "Colors: Blue / Gray")?
• Reopen the extension settings window by clicking the extension icon to see if the settings were properly saved.
  • Are the settings still set to the new settings ("Position: Top" and "Colors: Green / Red") or were they reverted to the default settings ("Position: Bottom" and "Colors: Blue / Gray")?

[tsnicholas]

I change the settings to my usual by setting the position to the top and setting the colors to green/red, and then and get prompted to refresh the page.

I refresh the page only to find out that it didn't change my settings at all. It's still on the bottom with the blue and gray bar rather the green and red one.

I check the menu again, and sure enough, it had simply reverted back to the default settings.

If this isn't happening for everyone, then I'm not sure what exactly happened to bug my client out or anything like that. It just sorta happened and then when I went to change the settings back to my preferred ones, it would do this same process.

[elliotwaite]

Hmm. If the settings are being saved, it looks like there is an issue with the data not being stored to the extensions storage. Can you try this:

1. Go to Firefox's "Extensions" page, then click the settings icon button in the top right of the list of extensions, then choose the "Debug Add-ons" option.

   

2. Then click the "Inspect" button to the right of the "Thumbnail Rating Bar for YouTube™" extension.

   

3. Then under the "Storage" tab, expand the "Extension Storage" option on the left, then click the "moz-extension://4e911fe6-..." option.

   

Do you see any data saved in there similar to the above image?

If you don't see any saved data in there, can you try keeping that inspection window open and then going back to a normal Firefox window, opening the extension settings and updating them again to see if the data shows up in the inspection window after saving the settings?

If you do see data in there, but it doesn't look correct (like maybe it's been corrupted somehow), maybe you can try deleting it and then retry saving the new extension settings again. To delete the current data, right-click the "moz-extension://4e911fe6-..." item in the left menu and choose the "Delete All" option:

Alternatively, if the above tests don't help. Maybe you could try:

• Uninstalling and reinstalling the extension.
• Updating Firefox (if it's not already using the latest version).
• Reset the Firefox settings (but this would also reset any settings you had changed and want to keep, so it might not be what you want to do).

[tsnicholas]

Well, I think I may or may not have found the problem based on this guide. When I went to check the extension storage as instructed, I'm greeted with no data at all that's being stored. No local storage, no cookies, nothing.

I checked the storage for other extensions too, like return dislike button as an example, and sure enough the storage was still there. So, the problem with storage being gone completely was exclusive to this one.

So, I guess I deleted the extension storage somehow? As far as I know, I'm using the latest version of Firefox so that shouldn't be an issue. Either way, I decided to uninstall the extension and restarting Firefox before reinstalling to make sure nothing is cached. Sure enough, the storage is back.

After changing my settings to the green/red bar on the top, it now works as intended after refreshing the page.

So it would appear that the problem was that something deleted the storage for the extension. I'm not sure what would cause this but at least it's working again. I'm only a student when it comes to programming, especially when it comes to web development, but after discovering this, perhaps you could add a check to see if the storage items exist before saving? Maybe that's a good idea, maybe it's not. Not sure. Anyway, I thank you for your help regardless.

[elliotwaite]

I'm glad to hear you got it working.

That's strange that the storage tab wasn't showing anything, I'm not sure what would have caused that. Maybe I'll figure out the reason eventually.

Thanks again for opening this issue, since others may run into the same thing. And it's good to know that uninstalling the extension, restarting the browser, and reinstalling the extension is a potential fix.