Story Monitor Extension
Information for Readers
Using Story Monitor is extremely simple:
- To monitor a story, open the last chapter you have read in the browser then select Monitor Story from the menu. It appears on both the tools menu and the popup menu.
- To view the stories you have monitored, select View -> Sidebar -> Story Monitor from the main browser menu.
- To check the stories for new chapters, press the update all button in the sidebar.
- To continue reading a story double click on it.
- To update the number of chapters you have read in a story simply add it a second time using the Monitor Story menu option.
- To remove a story from the monitor list, select it and choose Delete from the context menu.
FAQ
Q: Why are some stories a different colour / in bold?
A: The formatting reflects the status of the story. The status column is hidden by default. Use the drop-down in the top right corner of the story list to display it.
Q: What are the possible status codes?
A: Status codes are:
- read: All chapters have been read. Text is displayed in black.
- unread: Some chapters have not been read. Text is displayed in bold.
- timeout: On the last update, the timeout period (currently 20 seconds) expired waiting for a response. Text is displayed in dark red.
- site not found: On the last update, the extension could not attempt to connect to the server. This usually means an error resolving the site name in DNS or your Internet connection was down. Text is displayed in red.
- page not found: On the last update, the server returned a 404 page not found error. This usually means the story has been removed. Text is displayed in red.
- http error: On the last update, the server returned an http error other than 404. Text is displayed in red.
- parse error: On the last update, the server returned an response page but the extension could not interpret it as a story. This may be caused by server side errors messages being displayed instead of the story - e.g. If the server runs out of Mysql connections during the update. Text is displayed in red.
Q: Why doesn't the 'updated' column always show the correct date of the last update?
A: For some types of archive (e.g. E-Fiction), Story Monitor cannot detect the date a chapter was uploaded. In such cases, it displays the date the newest chapter was discovered. Therefore, if the author uploads the chapter on Monday and you don't press
update until Wednesday it will show Wednesday as the last update date. For newly added stories,
the updated column shows the date you added the story.
Q: What is the difference between the 'last attempted', 'last checked' and 'updated' columns in the story list?
A: The meaning of the columns is:
- Last attempted is the last date an attempt was made to download the story to check for new chapters. (i.e. when you pressed update)
- Last checked was the last time such an attempt successfully retrieved the story. If last checked is older than last attempted, it means
the site was down when you pressed update, or the story is no longer available.
- Updated was the last time a check discovered a new chapter.
Q: Can you add support for the site <insert name here>.com?
A: See the information for archive owners on supporting new sites.
Q: Where is the list of stories monitored stored?
A: In a file called "Stories.rdf" in your Firefox profile folder.
Known Issues
- Sort order is not restored correctly after restarting Firefox
if you have sorted by a date column.
- Upgrading from versions 0.1-0.4 to versions later than 0.5 corrupts
your Firefox profile and causes Firefox to hang on startup. To repair
this, close Firefox and using a text editor (e.g. notepad) delete
all lines that contain the word "storymonitor" from
the following 2 files from your profile folder:
- chrome\overlayinfo\navigator\content\overlays.rdf
- chrome\overlayinfo\browser\content\overlays.rdf
This is due to a bug in Firefox 1.0. The problem does not occur
in Firefox 1.1 where the entire chrome folder is no longer created.
For more details on known issues, see the Sourceforge Bugs tracker.
Please do not post new bugs without first discussing them in the Help Forum.
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