I am very keen to get feedback from a wide range of users on a variety of Windows systems so please take a look if you can spare the time. There are still some known bugs and some missing features (and probably many unknown issues) so please check the issue tracker to see if any issues you encounter have already been reported and then let me know what you think. There are more details and a link to the issue tracker at http://keefox.org where you can also subscribe to the RSS news feed for future updates.

I’ll post here when the 1.0 final version is ready but the main source for KeeFox news from now on will be the new official website at http://keefox.org

If you have installed previous versions of the KeeFox XPI or the KeeICE KeePass plugin please remove them first and make sure you are running KeePass 2.07 (although if you do not have KeePass installed yet, KeeFox will do that for you).

I do not advise trusting this software with your important passwords. I know of no way that data could be lost or exposed but it is simply not mature enough for me to guarantee that there will be no problems. So keep backups of everything and don’t let anything too sensitive near it just in case.

Download the 0.6 XPI

A list of recent improvements is available in the full release notes.

For the next version I hope to have 95% of the essential functionality complete so that KeeFox can start being used every day. So most (if not all) of these features should be complete in 0.7:

• Multiple password fields in one form (e.g. password and PIN)
• Multiple page login procedures
• Custom form field support, e.g. “use HTTPS login” checkbox
• Add passwords to a specific group
• HTTP authentication dialog box support

I would not (and indeed do not) yet trust this software with my important passwords. I know of no way that data could be lost or exposed but it is simply not mature enough for me to guarantee that there will be no problems. So keep backups of everything and don’t let anything too sensitive near it just in case.

Go to the KeeFox website to find a link to the firefox addon and the full details of this release.

The source code is in the subversion (SVN) code repository at https://keefox.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/keefox/

Over the next couple of months I hope to do the following, leading to a 0.6 release which is suitable for wider testing among existing KeePass users.

• Add all configurable options to the options panel
• Make KeeFox understand KeePass groups
• Provide a way to log in to websites by clicking on a password entry in a Firefox toolbar button dropdown
• Support a wider array of login forms (maybe dynamically generated forms or forms with multiple password fields)
• Add all other outstanding tasks to a public task tracker

I have postponed the integration with other areas of Firefox (such as the address bar or bookmarks) but still hope to achieve something in this area before the version 1.0 release. If you think you can help with this task, please

You could start by downloading the binary version (Windows only). I can’t promise it will work and I’m sure it’s not necessary for me to suggest early and regular backups of any important data on your machine so I won’t. It is in the form of a Firefox add-on but please only install it on a development Firefox user profile because it’s not been tested alongside many other add-ons and data loss is a possibility. I have done limited testing as an administrator on a 32bit Win XP machine with .NET, KeePass 2.06 and Firefox 3.0.5 already installed. I recommend reading the information on this KeeFox project page first. Please let me know if you do try it out and say how successful it was and what environment you were working in.

There were two main groups of tasks I wanted to finish by version 0.4: an installation process via a firefox add-on and a very basic UI to allow passwords to be saved and filled in. These have been pretty much finished although there are a number of little tweaks still to be made and there will no doubt be gradual improvements to both of these aspects for many months to come.

There are a number of main tasks I want to get finished before the release of 0.5:

1. Handle multiple KeePass databases (or at the very least, don’t crash in their presence!)
2. Develop the UI far enough that using and saving passwords is pretty intuitive
3. Create an options panel to allow the user to manage some configurable add-on options
4. Create a UI for the user to choose to load a site and auto-login (in the form of a drop down menu)
5. Extend (4) to integrate with the user’s bookmarks (and history) probably via a customised firefox places view with annotations

The last three tasks can be separated from the other parts of the code easily enough so I think that they are ideal candidates for other people to help with. They will be written using mainly javascript and XUL, with CSS being required at a later date too (although this can be added by me or someone else if you prefer). If you’re interested in knowing more about what’s involved, leave a comment below or contact me.

I’m not updating the road-map for this release because I feel that the above list is more useful in the short term; in the long term I’m aiming to start using a public task tracker for version 0.6 onwards. The rough ideas in the road-map still apply, although I think it’s unlikely I’ll catch up the extra month it took to reach the 0.4 stage so it may be more realistic to expect a final release in late summer 2009. Of course, if I get a lot of help, this could be brought forward a bit!

If I get no offers of help for the three items mentioned above by the end of January 2009, I’ll start work on them myself and I roughly estimate that 0.5 would be released in mid-March. If others can help out then it could happen around a month earlier.

The version 0.4 code may be useful for:

• developers that are keen to learn more about how KeeFox will be architected
• developers that would like to help develop KeeFox, maybe through one of the tasks described above

Developers that are interested in seeing how a Firefox C++ XPCOM extension can be built using Visual Studio 2008, have a particular interest in seeing an ICE IPC example or are looking for ideas about how to integrate third party software with Firefox could also find it useful although version 0.2 may be a better place to start since it is less specific to the eventual aims of this project.

Compilation requirements and guidelines are on the sourceforge KeeFox project site

I was just about to get stuck into writing the actual code that will handle reading and writing passwords from KeePass to/from Firefox but thought it might be a good time to take a new source code snapshot and call it version 0.2 so the code is now available from the KeeFox sourceforge project website

I’ve also updated the roadmap at KeeFox task list

There’s still nothing much to look at from an end-user perspective and I’ve now abandoned the idea of integrating directly with the existing Firefox 3 login manager becuase it is not completely suitable (see Who will implement nsILoginManagerStorage? for a more in depth reason).

I think I’ve identified a pretty workable installation process which should get new users up and running with minimal fuss – I’ve done enough work on this so I can be confident it will work but there are still a few missing links that I will fill in over the coming months.

As with 0.1, I’ve not really tested the compiled application at all so I would recommend restricting yourself to just reading the source code (and maybe attempting a compilation) for a little while longer.

The code may be useful for:

• developers that are keen to learn more about how KeeFox will be architected
• developers that would like to help understand KeeFox in order to help me get it on the road to a beta release early next year
• developers that are interested in seeing how a Firefox C++ XPCOM extension can be built using Visual Studio 2008
• developers with a particular interest in an ICE IPC example
• developers looking for ideas about how to integrate third party software with Firefox

Compilation requirements and guidelines are on the sourceforge KeeFox project site

This version demonstrates many of the functions and technologies that will be used as we develop the project further but it’s not much to look at yet.
It may be useful for:

• developers that are keen to learn more about how KeeFox will be architected
• developers that would like to help understand KeeFox in order to help me get it past version 0.1 and on the road to a beta release early next year.
• developers that are interested in seeing how a Firefox C++ XPCOM extension can be built using Visual Studio 2008
• developers with a particular interest in the Firefox 3 nsILoginManagerStorage interface
• people who think attempting to compile visual studio projects is even more fun than eating cake

Compilation requirements and guidelines are on the sourceforge KeeFox project site