Version 1.3 is now available, and as promised, this is another maintenance release.
The goal of this release was to fix the most annoying bugs, and solve a bunch of difficult problems.
As I've mentioned, the way most Trello Chrome Extensions work is by redrawing the page several times per second. This tends to drain battery by about 30%, or waste CPU and isn't particularly elegant, but it works. The downside of it is it feels slow, because you have to wait for a few hundred milliseconds for the screen to update, and you can notice it.
I decided from the beginning I wanted TrelloX to feel like part of Trello, so I couldn't use that method. Instead what TrelloX does is watches the Trello Board, and only does something if and when you make an change. But nowadays browsers are so sophisticated at drawing websites quickly, it's really difficult to be tell when something has finished updating on the page, so you can fiddle with it.
For example, by the time your Trello Board looks like it's loaded, it's actually only loaded the front of the cards, and it's still finishing loading the contents of the cards. But if you're an Extension watching the Board, how do you tell?
An easier answer again would be - Use Trello's API and build this as a Power Up. But I didn't want it as a Power Up (not yet anyway), because a) I feel like more people will be able to use TrelloX more easily if it's an Extension, and b) I wanted to see if anyone was even interested in the idea before I set up hosting for a Power Up and make that sort of commitment.
Anyway, version 1.3 fixes a lot of these problems. It should now properly wait until exactly the right moment to install, and install fully and correctly every time, even if you refresh or change Boards. Please let me know if you see otherwise.
I've also re-architected a lot of parts of TrelloX so it's smarter and faster about how it updates things when it does actually need to make changes (i.e.—when you make changes). For example, TrelloX used to draw all Card Numbers every time you made any change to a Board. Now it only draws Card Numbers for any new Cards. Much more efficient.
The net result is TrelloX will use even less battery and feel even more tightly integrated and robust, and that's where I'm heading. The next version or two before version 2.0 will be about ensuring TrelloX is a rock-solid platform and well designed on the inside, before I start adding new features.
And I'm really excited about some of the new features, I think you're going to love all of them them, but I want to leave that as a surprise for now 😊.
The full list of changes for version 1.3 is:
- Added framework to interact with the Trello API (for future)
- Further performance increases of common functions should make TrelloX feel more lightweight
- Fixed: TrelloX should now always install correctly after a page refresh (please let me know)
- Fixed: New Cards now get a Number, if Numbers is 'On'
- Fixed: All Cards now display Numbers on page refresh if Numbers is 'On'
- Fixed: A Card now keeps its Number after being dragged
- Fixed: Subtasks are now hidden on page refresh if Subtasks is 'Off'
- Fixed: Card Numbers are no longer repeatedly redrawn
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