RetroTxt Versions Save

Updates and new documentation for https://docs.retrotxt.com.

• New Backup and restore options to save and load your RetroTxt settings.
• New reset button for the Custom colour values in the Options.
• New Limit URLs option to force Hyperlink to validate URLs, linking only links that start with an http or https protocol.
• New Reset to defaults button in the Settings Options.
• Changed the CSS of the page wrap toggle. It now works correctly on windows and tabs smaller than 640px in width. And it has enabled an optimized text-wrapping feature.
• Monitor downloads handles different server replies better and provides a restart recommendation when toggled on.
• Text render effect option is changed to use a toggle switch.
• Changed the Line Height slider to display variations in percentage values.
• Fixed error Cannot read properties of null for new installs.

• New Intel One Mono fonts.
• Removed the column wrap toggle from the information header of a RetroTxt browser tab. The feature was confusing with the page wrap toggle, and would not work correctly with the 80 column wrap ANSI option in the RetroTxt Options.
• Fixed a major issue in Chrome 118+, with text files breaking due to the Sanitizer API deprecation. As a stopgap, the DOMPurify library is used to sanitise the text files.
• The RetroTxt options tab changes the document title.
• Clicking the links or buttons in the toolbar popup will only ever open one RetroTxt options tab.
• Fixed Monitor downloads launching twin tabs of the same file.
• Minor tweak to the Getting Started dialog text.
• Removed version_name from the manifest as it hid useful version information.
• Fixed C:/ drive being referenced on non-Windows operating systems.
• Fixed "RetroTxt has run into a problem" displaying the wrong keyboard keys on macOS.
• Fixed package.json version number not matching the manifest.

• New Display Hyperlinks option to convert plain text URLs, emails and IP addresses into hyperlinks.
• New Cascadia Mono and Code fonts, that support ligatures and Powerline symbols.
• Toolbar popup contains icons with links to the fonts, display, settings options and a link to the RetroTxt Extension Details tab.
• Update Spleen fonts to v2.0 and include the use of size 32x64 variation.
• Fixed Page wrap behaviour not replicating on new tabs.
• Hyperlinked the Allow access to file URLs is off notice in the popup.

• Change the behavior of the toolbar button to display useful usability information. The previous, unreliable per-tab on/off toggle function would sometimes have Chrome disconnect the button from the tab, breaking the functionality.
• The home and office computer fonts use a local, monospaced font as the fallback. Previously, the browser would show out-of-range characters in a variable-width font, making blocks and line characters look unnecessarily messy.
• Update the Information header to reorder the information displayed and mention the shortcut keys to view the original text.
• Update and fix broken links to external resources and prioritized HTTPS over HTTP schemes.
• Rearrange the Settings and Feature pane to emphasize the add domain input.
• Fix a bug that gave RetroTxt access to the Suggested domains after removing them.

• Fixed flickering when changing between Option tabs.
• Fixed broken documentation links.

Highlights

• Options interface should be more responsive with less visual jank.
• RetroTxt features and functions are more reliable.
• Changing Options should apply to all open tabs, including focused and unfocused tabs.

• Manifest v3 has much better error handling and there should be less uncaptured errors.

• Unfocused tabs can run RetroTxt in the background.

• Browser tab displays the SAUCE title and author when available.

• Artworks linked in the Samples tab display the title and author on the browser tab.

• Smear block characters are applied to BBS texts.

• Monitor downloads works better with 16colo.rs and defacto2.net by ignoring their incorrect Content-Type headers.

• New Toolbar icon setting to select dark or light mode button.

• Updated the Welcome, new install text to be a Getting started with RetroTxt brief.

• Information header encoding can be clicked to change the encoding.

• Fixed font size adjustment for 2x and 3x values. Text now centre aligns and stopped unexpected text wrapping.

• Fixed Options reloading the page when a new tab was selected.

• Tweaked the Information header CSS to use very slight rounded corners.

• Documentation tab in Options shares the same layout and formatting as the other menus.

• Settings - Run RetroTxt on files hosted on these domains
  The on/off toggle has been removed for code simplification.
  Created a button to remove and restore website suggestions.
  Hostname input form responds to Enter ↵ key presses.

• Settings - Monitor downloads, toggles the optional download and downloads.open permissions.

• Mentions of the file scheme file:///, will under Windows display as file:///C:/

• Transcode context menu is disabled by default except for textfile tabs.

• Replaced the scripts/eventpage.js background page with modular service workers.

• Replaced and split the scripts/functions.js shared functions page with scripts/helpers.js for content-scripts and scripts/sw/helpers.js for service workers.

• Replaced simple one-time message requests with long-lived connections where needed.
  This should fix some strange behaviour and failures that occurred in previous versions.

• Removed the use of Window.localStorage and Window.sessionStorage which held Options settings and replaced it with chrome.storage.local.
  This was needed as the Window interface is not accessible by service workers which are required by Manifest v3.

• Dropped the permissions requirement for tabs.

• Dropped the Transcode text context menu.

• Using pnpm as the dependencies manager.

• The use of Manifest v3 with service workers is incompatible with Firefox.

• Removed the Firefox specific build tools.

What's Changed

• Manifest V3 update. by @bengarrett in https://github.com/bengarrett/RetroTxt/pull/146

Full Changelog: https://github.com/bengarrett/RetroTxt/compare/v4.2.0...v5.0.0-rc.1

• Squared 1:1, 8x8 pixel PC fonts now use their -2y variants when available. The 2y variants are 16x16 in size, meaning they're easier to read and look better.
• 11 new color themes for the Options tab under Settings.
• Replaced deprecated API function, extension.getURL().
• Fixed broken elements in options.html.