🎉 Release v3.4.4 (2025-02-10) - Start UI Improvements and Other Fixes [Crazy Week Day 1]

Day one of the coding marathon to push Videochat Extension a bit forward has come to an end.

Changes include improving the start interface by adding a complete features list, blocking inaccessible features and simplifying the Browser Mode setup. Also fixed a critical bug related to the popup opening mechanism and made several minor adjustments.

The monitoring part itself was not altered in any way, but don’t worry—there will be plenty of time to break it later.

What changed?

• post-install page

  • If your browser does not support side panels, the 'Open Sidebar' button will be disabled

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  • The play/pause functionality on mouse enter/mouse leave is now more stable.

  • Now, when you hover over the toolbar icon, it will take over the context menu, so you won't have to search for the magnifying glass to understand how to activate it.

    • before/after:

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• start interface

  • NEW: Feature detection support.

    • Historically, Chromium Extensions did not have any alternatives for rendering interfaces other than modifying websites directly. However, this situation has started to improve recently, with Google pushing the Side Panel and Document Picture-in-Picture APIs.

    • Videochat Extension now offers multiple interface modes, each utilizing a unique approach. However, it turns out that many users are affected by customized browsers like Opera, where the latest browsing features are not yet supported. This leads to various errors, necessitating a complete block of unsupported modes.

    • Now, in the 'Choose Interface Mode' dialog, unsupported modes will be automatically detected and disabled, and clear instructions will be provided on how to install a reliable browser that will allow users to access all extension features.

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  • NEW: Full list of features!

    • Instead of the boring "Ultimate Monitoring" note, there is now a button that opens a comprehensive list of already working features as well as those planned for the future, both paid and free.

    • The button at the bottom of the list mirrors the 'Start' button in Browser Mode.

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      • The features list is expected to grow in the future, and the side panel already displays it well. However, the popup has a limited height, so when you click on the features list in the popup, it will open in a new tab for a more readable format.

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  • Centered the start UI content and fixed the maximum width for consistency.

    • It seems that the internal Chromium teams can't agree on a minimum width for side panels, so it's better to enforce at least something for the time being.

  • Browser Mode

    • added a tooltip explaining that there is no need to install any additional software to use this approach.

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    • Improved Instructions for Setting Up Browser Mode

      • A significant amount of time over the past month has been spent helping users set up Browser Mode across different browsers.

      • Overall, three groups of browsers were identified:

        • Chrome (works for most browsers)

        • Microsoft Edge

        • Trash: Opera, Arc, and any other problematic heavily customized Chromium-based browsers, which lead directly to recommending the installation of Brave Browser.

      • So, with three groups, we now have three buttons, which should hopefully reduce user frustration and allow to spend more time building features.

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      • There was a workaround for Microsoft Edge in the past, but it assumed that Edge users had installed the extension from the Microsoft Add-on Store. Some Edge users who installed from the Chrome Web Store encountered deadlocks because they were treated as Chrome users.

        • In their typical routine of replacing every instance of "Chrome" with "Edge," Microsoft also renamed the flag needed for the extension to function.

      • Any users of other problematic Chromium forks should go directly to the "Opera, Arc, or Other Issues?" button.

  • Reduced the maximum allowed domain name length before truncation by 2 characters to save space.

  • Opening legacy or new window modes will now close the active side panel only if the start is in side panel mode itself.

  • Updated text localizations to more match available text space.

• Fixed a critical bug where the popup might not open if the active window could not be detected. It is unknown how many users were affected, as this issue seems to be dependent on the operating system and browser.

Conclusion

Day one of the coding marathon has passed. Most of the time was spent on creating a features list and thinking about what to even put in that list.

I also figured out how to take good screenshots with the cursor intact and how to capture small GIFs and edit them a bit to add some text. This isn't at the level of screen.studio demos, but the upcoming posts should be more illustrative.

It's not the healthiest routine, and I'm not sure if I can maintain this pace for the entire week. Anyway, for the next day, the plan is to focus on something completely new or try to improve our new monitoring UI by adding more valuable data about monitored connections, depending on the mood. You can now check out the features list to see what is being worked on.

— qrlk