Thursday, August 31, 2006

Changes...

Well, it's always nice to know that the company you're using is trying to improve itself, but this is starting to get a little annoying. It seems like about once a month Cingular has brought down it's main website for improvements and changes. We'll see what happens tomorrow when they bring their site back online, hopefully the changes aren't too big of a deal.

I actually have a fix ready to go for people that have group plans. The extension was having trouble finding the correct table to read when a user in a group plan logged in. I think I've solved that problem, but I don't want to release it until I can verify that I didn't break anything that was already working. Plus, nothing will work until Cingular's site is up and running again.

Although I am going to send to the guy, who shall remain nameless, that sent me some more info about how it wasn't working for him. Thanks again for taking the time to give me feedback.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Tale of Two (or more?) Cingulars

It's come to my attention that my extension will not work for everyone. This is not a shock, but now I actually have one concrete reason why. Thanks to JJ for sending me some more information. It turns out that cingular doesn't have all of their users on the same page, quite literally. Looking at JJ's screenshot, I realized that Cingular still lets AT&T users login to the old AT&T system. When I first started working on this extension I was still logging into AT&T's website through Cingular using this address: http://www.cingular.com/ocs. Just as I had the extension in a usable form, Cingular migrated me to their system: http://www.cingular.com and the extension was ruined. As reference, this is what the minutes section of the old AT&T page looks like:

transition message:

vs new:


So, I figured they migrated everyone to the new website. Since then I've completely reworked the extension and am not even sure I have a copy of the old one around. Even if I did, it certainly wouldn't plug right in. Now, I'm interested to see how many old AT&T users are still able to login to the old website or if most everyone has been transitioned. Unfortunately at this point, my extension won't work with the old website, but depending on demand that may be remedied.

I'd also really like to hear from anyone who's had the extension working properly.

Cingular Minutes Minder 0.3

Version 0.3 is out today. Some of the things it fixes are:
- formatting the tooltip table
- better error handling
- better initial login process

The biggest change is that this one might actually work for someone other than me. Although, to disuade too much enthusiasm, I've already had a couple people tell me that it hasn't worked for them.

If anyone is feeling in a giving sort of mood, I could really use some feedback about how it's working (or not) for you. The information I need is this:
- The page source of the first page you get after you login to cingular.com. Meaning, login to Cingular.com like you normally would. When you get to that page, hit ctrl+u and a window with HTML should come up. Copy all of that HTML and send it to me.
- What kind of account you have. Have you always been a cingular customer? AT&T customer transferred to cingular?
- The link that you go to when you login to the website. ("www.cingular.com", "www.cingular.com/ocs", "onlinecare.cingular.com", etc)
- If possible, a screenshot of the first page you get after you login. This will help me match up the HTML you sent me to what you see when you're logged in the website.

Hope it works for someone else.

Just to prove I'm not making this up, here's version 0.3 in action :-).

Monday, August 21, 2006

Cingular Minutes Minder 0.2.1

Minor revision this time. The extension now checks your minutes automatically when a new Firefox window is opened. It only checks once a day though. I might change the frequency if I figure out how often the website updates. If anyone knows what that is, let me know.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Cingular Minutes Minder 0.2

I posted a link to version 0.2 in the Versions sidebar. I have a project page hosted on mozdev that hosts the cvs repository and the extension releases. If you're interested in looking at the code, obviously you can open up the extension, but you can also check it out from the repository. The cvs repository will have the most recent stuff that I'm working on.

This release has the following fixes:
- tooltip added to display other minute information
- connection error fixed
- preference window updated

Here's a screenshot:

Cingular Minutes Minder Firefox Extension

Cingular Minutes Minder is a Firefox extension that checks the status of your minutes with Cingular. With a valid online Cingular account, Cingular Minutes Minder checks your minutes and displays the number of remaining "Anytime" minutes in your status bar. The rest of your minute information is displayed as a tool tip when you put your mouse over the extension. The extension stores your login and password information in Firefox's password manager so you only need to enter it once.

I haven't gotten a chance to have anyone but me test it so I really look forward to hearing any comments. There are already a number of things I'd like to do with it, but there's only so much free time.

Also, this extension is totally dependent on Cingular's website, so if there are any changes it could cause the extension to stop working. If that happens I'll probably notice quickly and try to get an update out ASAP but no guarantees.