Disappearing Snippets
We’ve received a number of reports of disappearing snippet libraries from TextExpander users. Data loss is one of the worst kinds of bugs. While we can help users restore their settings file from a backup, that’s the best we can do. We want to do better and fix this. Unfortunately, we can’t reproduce it.
If you experience this problem, you can restore your snippet library by quitting TextExpander and restoring this file from your Time Machine or other backup:
[Home]/Library/Application Support/TextExpander/Settings.textexpander
Before you re-launch TextExpander, please also send a copy of the restored file to us at textexpander@smileonmymac.com. This is especially helpful if you find the problem recurs for you. If we gather enough settings files, hopefully we’ll find one with which we can reproduce the problem. If we can reproduce it we can almost certainly fix it. In the meantime, we’re very sorry for the inconvenience.
Firefox Bug Can Disable TextExpander
TextExpander users who use Firefox sometimes find that TextExpander stops expanding. Quitting and re-launching Firefox restores TextExpander functionality. Let me explain why this is happening and ask for your help.
Firefox enables secure event input when it presents password fields. If you submit a form by pressing Return in a password field, Firefox doesn’t turn off secure event input. When secure event input is on, key loggers such as TextExpander do not receive notification of keyboard events.
You can work around this problem after the fact by closing the window which held the field or by quitting and re-launching Firefox. You can avoid this problem by submitting form fields using the Submit button rather than pressing return in a field.
There’s a bug open on the issue but its up to the Mozilla folks to adopt the fix and release an updated version of Firefox:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=556873
You can help by voting up this bug. Click on the “vote” link then register and vote for this bug. Perhaps if its priority increases, it will get noticed and addressed. Thanks!
As always, if you have comments or questions about TextExpander, let us know.
