Annozilla 0.7.0, annotations 0.4.0 released

Annozilla 0.7.0 and annotations 0.4.0 have been released for Firefox 3/3.5. The installation instructions and user manual will continue to be updated.

Firefox users can use the automatic update facility to get these new versions.

New features in the 0.7 build:

"Scroll Into View" for annotations from the sidebar
Existing "annotate" context menu item split into Annotate selection/Annotate page
Keyboard shortcut for "Delete annotation" from sidebar
Highlighting of annotations in document
Asynchronous load of annotations improves app responsivity during load
New "stop load" feature during resolution of annotations
Quick access to options from sidebar
Full tabbed browsing support
"Reply" functionality (Remote Server only)
Confirmation when closing an editor window with unsaved changes
Preferences wizard for easy first-time setup
Authentication is left to the browser

This is the Annozilla project, designed to view and create annotations associated with a web page, as defined by the W3C Annotea project. The idea is to store annotations as RDF on a server, using XPointer (or at least XPointer-like constructs) to identify the region of the document being annotated.

The intention of Annozilla is to use Mozilla's native facilities to manipulate annotation data - its built-in RDF handling to parse the annotations, and nsIXmlHttpRequest to submit data when creating annotations.

To use Annozilla, you will need to install the packages, get set up with a user account with an annotation server (e.g., the W3C test server), and then you should be ready to start using the extension. There is a draft of a manual available on this site to describe how to use the extension. Please feel free to address any comments on this manual to the mailing list.