TryAgain extension
TryAgain is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that automatically keeps retrying when a server is not found. When you reach Firefox’s built-in page saying ‘Server not found’, a countdown timer starts running and after a user-defined interval it page will refresh, hence retrying to find the server. TryAgain is a slim and friendly extension and is, at the time of writing, downloaded over 44.000 times from addons.mozilla.org.
The functionality of TryAgain was originally created in the shape of a greasemonkey script, created by my friends Eric and Paul Lammertsma. If you are more interested in the userscript rather than the extension, you can download it here.
Besides retrying TryAgain offers additional functionality: it presents two links that allow you to search for the missing web page in either Google Cache or the Wayback Machine, with just a single click of a button. The newest version of TryAgain contains a counter that shows how many refreshes have been done, and allows the user to limit that number to a certain maximum.
More detailed information can be found by reading the blog posts in the TryAgain category.
Version history
Version 3.2 - 37Kb.
Added Firefox 3 support. Chinese [zh-CN] locale added. Stops countdown when user starts typing in the address bar.
Bugs solved: TryAgain does no longer refresh the SSL Exception page.
From this version on TA is no longer compatible with FF2.0 and earlier version.
As of July 6th 2009, this version is compatible with FF3.5. No version number update.
Version 3.1 - 36Kb.
Bugs solved: now also works in frames and iframes. Russian [ru-RU] locale added.
Version 3.0 - 34Kb.
Complete reimplementation with cleaner and more efficient code. Adjustable limit to the number of retries. Option to hide the menu item. Pressing ESC will stop countdown. French [fr-FR] locale added.
Version 2.0 - 15Kb.
Additional functionality by Aldo Vargas: when the server is not found, two links enable the user to search for the requested web page in Google Cache or the WayBack Machine - with just one click.
This is the first version compatible with Firefox 2.0.
Version 1.2 - 36Kb.
Spanish [es-ES] and Italian [it-IT] locale added.
Version 1.1 - 35Kb.
This version will also stop when the user presses the ’stop trying’ button after the http request has been sent.
Version 1.0 - 32Kb.
Initial version. Original userscript packed into an extension.
Screenshot
Screenshot of version 3.1
![[screenshot]](http://www.jurresip.nl/mathijs/images/tryagain_screenshot.png)
June 30th, 2007 at 2:16 am
[…] TryAgain se mantendrá tratando de cargar una página cuando ésta no responda. En cuanto aparece el mensaje estándar de error de carga de página (como el que se ve en la imagen), verás un mensaje que te dice que en 5 segundos se reintentará la carga de la página. El tiempo puede configurarse en las opciones de la extensión. Además, la página de error de carga de página mostrará enlaces para intentar ver el registro de la página en Google Cache o en la WayBack Machine. Si en algún momento necesitas desactivar la extensión, puedes hacerlo simplemente desmarcando la opción “Activar TryAgain†en el menú Herramientas. […]
July 20th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
We discussed some ideas for improvement (for example, discovering some way of resetting the counter when hitting refresh), but this isn’t high priority at all. I probably wouldn’t even use that feature.
I love the fact that you can toggle the Tool menu entry! My Tools menu is getting pretty littered as it is.
A minor point is that the only way to temporarily disable TryAgain is by enabling the Tool menu entry. Perhaps the Add-on options screen should also have a checkbox allowing you to disable TryAgain? You wouldn’t even need an extra translation — just recycle the one from the menu!
But all-in-all, the add-on is perfect!
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:57 pm
I recently discovered a bug in the latest version of TryAgain: it gives an error (and refuses work) when running in a frame. This is due to the fact that TryAgain counts the number of times it has been refreshing in the tab it’s located in and does not correctly try to access the tab when loaded in a subframe.
I will try to solve this problem as soon as I have the time. (Currently busy on an update for FindThatFont, and a school project…)
Note that version 2.0 does not have this bug.
October 4th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Hello!
I apologize for the English, I translated text through with the Russian into English through Google Translate, nades that you understand the essence of the issue.
Your extension is triggered if there is a standard dialogue Firefox, but I use local caching proxy server, which gives Firefox is not the standard response, the standard dialogue does not appear in Firefox and TryAgain inoperative. Could you do in your TryAgain to hand inscribed response from the server that would be TryAgain worked, or Give please, that you can change the file extension so that it worked on the innovative responses.
Thanks in advance.
October 5th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I’ll look into it and see if I can fix some things. Please don’t expect anything short-term
November 21st, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Great! Could you update the copy on Mozilla Addons though? Thanks!
November 21st, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Also, it would be nice to add compatibility with Resurrect Pages and the new add SSL exception dialog (on Minefield builds)
March 9th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
I really like this extension because it’s a great timeserver when a server didn’t work the first time, but what I found annoying is that when you try to navigate away from an error page.
Given the TryAgain timer is set to a pretty short interval (like 5 seconds) and you try to navigate to a slow loading bookmark, URL, history entry or similar, TryAgain reloads in the background thus canceling the user’s link request.
Long story short: TryAgain should detect if the users wants to move away from the error page and stop its reloading efforts.
Pleeeeeaaaaase?
xeen
March 9th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
That is indeed something that can be annoying.
I haven’t got around to figuring out how to solve that, but in the meanwhile you can work around it by pressing the Escape key before typing a new url or selecting a bookmark. Escape is the same as the ‘Stop’ or ‘Stop trying’ button, only quicker
It will be solved in the next version.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
A release with Firefox 3 support???
May 15th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Mathijs: Agagooga touches on this, but doesn’t really explain it. You might already know about it but I’ll reiterate in order to let you know at least one more person is annoyed by this than you thought was before I posted this.
TryAgain shows up in SLL certificate error dialogs… it shouldn’t, because then it hides the important “Add an exception” link. Reloading the site with the bad cert over and over again without adding an exception isn’t going to get you any closer to actually visiting it. Right now the only workaround is to disable TryAgain.
To stop TryAgain from refreshing when the user enters a url, couldn’t you hook the body.onunload event (or window.onunload)? Not sure if that fires when you START navigating away or when the next page is actually starts loading. Not sure if the error pages are XUL or HTML or if onunload works in XUL if it is XUL… It would seem a good place to start though.
Anonymous: The current version runs fine in FF3 for me, apart from the above problems I have.
May 17th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Thank you, that certainly makes things more clear. I’ll fix it for the next version.
About FF3 compatibility: I’ve updated the current version to support the latest FF 3 beta 5. Although internally nothing changed, the previous version was compatible with FF3 up to the beta 2 release.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
mathijs, I have been an avid user of your extensions since learning about it a couple/few years ago.
After seeing you updated for FF 3b5, I tried to manually bump your extension to FF 3 RC 1 and it works without major problems (Windows XP). The only issue is that it conflicts with another add-on called Resurrect Pages (it also updated, but lacks RC 1 compatbility — I’ve manually bumped that one too).
With the two bumped add-ons, Try Again took priority of Resurrect Pages causing RP to not show when I arrived at a site that was down temporary (like server outage). While you’re working on Try Again’s next version for FF 3, could you do anything to eliminate the conflict with Resurrect Pages?
Or should I talk to the author of RP instead? Or maybe you two can talk to eliminate conflicts between the two add-ons.
You can find Resurrect Pages here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2570
May 21st, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I’ve looked into this before and it turned out that RP, just like TA, replaces the original error page with its own rather than modifying it. This conflict cannot be solved unless PG and TA are merged into a single extension
May 21st, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I see… Guess I’ll have to pick one over the other and TryAgain is more useful even though I want both add-ons to work (Resurrect Pages gives me one click access to several search engine caches whenever I want or when I get an error page like “Server Not Found”.
Thanks anyways for your help.
May 26th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Very useful extension, but doesn’t work on Firefox 3 RC1.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Ngamer01, how did you made TA work with FF3.1RC1?
When I receive page load error, I see TA buttons but clicking on them makes nothing. As well as the page isn’t reloaded.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
*FF3RC1
June 17th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Please! Make TryAgain compatible with Firefox 3
June 17th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Same request here, please for FF3.
June 18th, 2008 at 1:27 am
TryAgain doesnt work with firefox3. Its a fantastic plugin for firefox, so please make it run in the new firefox version.
Thx a lot
June 20th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Ditto the requests to update for Firefox 3!
June 24th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Love you plug-in!
Will there be a version for ff3?
June 24th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I love this plugin too. Will there be Firefox 3 support? is it planed almost?
June 30th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I’m yet another one requesting that you please update TA so that it’s compatible with Fx 3.
I’m a member of deviantART.com and that site constantly has problems with loading pages the first time around.
TA has been a life saver in dealing with that.
July 13th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I have to use a cellphone internet connection and found Tryagain immensely useful. But since upgrading to FF3 it’s become so frustrating when the connection drops in and out. Please could we have an upgrade.
July 17th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
This extension is so useful! Any chance of getting it to work with FF3?
July 18th, 2008 at 3:03 am
I beg for an update for Firefox 3.
Please
July 19th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Looking forward for Firefox 3 version. Very needed!
July 23rd, 2008 at 5:51 pm
PLease make it work on FF3!
Thanks in advance!
August 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
ff3 please.. cant surf in peace without it
August 6th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Thanks very much for the update
August 8th, 2008 at 2:31 am
I am at a site that has a really bad proxy server, and we are constantly getting 504 Gateway Timeout and 500 Server error messages.
Is there any chance to modify it to recognise and retry on 504 and 500 error?
Thanks.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Better if user can self input error messages numbers for try again.
September 6th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Is there a way that TryAgain can get past the
To display this page, Firefox must send information that will repeat any action (such as a search or order confirmation) that was performed earlier.
dialog box that pops up on some sites? Or is there another way to get past this problem?
September 8th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Same thing as Gene said above, is there a way to bypass the “must send information that will repeat any action” prompt?
September 8th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Bypassing that dialog box surely seems to be desirable, but both automatically resending the data and requesting the page without sending the data could lead to unwanted results. Think of situations where you are purchasing something online and halfway through loading the confirmation page your wifi hiccups and seconds later TryAgain places another purchase automatically. Even experienced users might miss it or forget it and get screwed.
There might be other addons available that hide this window, although I haven’t been able to find any quickly. My guess is that the dialog is rather low-level and hard to overrule.
I agree that the dialog is annoying, however removing it will not be implemented in TryAgain. I’ll keep an eye out for other fixes though.
September 9th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Well, maybe if there was some kind of whitelist it could be implemented safely.
September 19th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Suggested improvement.
When the maximum attempts have been reached. I chick the try again button and nothing happens.
I suggest that if the button is clicked then the counter should be reset.
Thanks
Kris
September 19th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Nice add-on, however it’s incompatible with Resurrect Pages and ErrorZilla Plus. TryAgain only presents two links called google cache and wayback Machine, but ErrorZilla or Resurrect Pages presents more. When TryAgain is open, neither ErrorZilla nor Resurrect Pages works on error page, could TryAgain fixes this problem in next version?
April 8th, 2009 at 1:31 am
your addon will interact with errorzilla mod,maybe you can check this problem out
July 1st, 2009 at 10:53 am
Will my favorite add-on eventually work on Firefox 3.5 too?
July 1st, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Please make it run on FF.3.5!!
THX
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:49 am
Hey LOVE TryAgain… so usefull… but it doesnt work with 3.5!!!!! PLEASE UPDATE!!! u guys ROCK….! thanx
July 20th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Hi, I’m also looking forward to an update to your TryAgain extension that makes it compatible with Firefox 3.5
Thanks!
August 8th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Please could you make a version for Mozilla Prism. it will be very much appreciated
August 12th, 2009 at 10:22 am
1. During a retry the “Try X of Y” line disappears momentarily causing a flicker as the frame shrinks one line. It then reappears with the next value of X.
2. After a few retries, a previous page is sometimes fetched rather than the one requested.
Firefox 3.5.2 (English) running on Chinese WinXP SP3. TryAgain 3.2.0
August 27th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
I’m guessing from the comments above that there is no way to work with Privoxy error pages? I’d like to have the ability to TryAgain when working through Privoxy-TOR, but Privoxy seem to replace a standard error page with it’s own when there is a 404 timeout.
I’d really appreciate it if you could check this out, as TA is a GREAT add-on!
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:34 am
I really like this extension! I have a session that’s got 232 tabs in 6 windows, and am on dial-up. This extension does a *lot* of the work of restoring that when I have to restart FireFox.
A suggestion to make it even more useful: Add a random setting, so that it will TryAgain after a certain base + (0 -> R) seconds. This would be best if *each TAB* could have a different random interval. This would tend to spread out the retries if a lot of pages time out at once.
January 20th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
i like your program a lot
i have a suggestion for improvement
would there be any way that opening a new link be intercepted and placed in a que. when one page has been loaded it would go to open the next page in the que and so on. I get a lot of time outs because i am on dial-up and open up links as i am reading thru articles
i figure that this would be a nice additional feature to TryAgain
January 22nd, 2010 at 12:42 am
??????? ?? ??????????. ???? ????? ?????? ?.?. FF 3.6 ????????????.
January 22nd, 2010 at 11:29 am
PLEASE FIX IT for firefox 3.6!!!! I NEED THIS>>> PLEAAAAASEEEE updateeee
January 27th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
plz update to fx3.6 thx this is a great addon
January 29th, 2010 at 1:13 am
Support for 3.6?! I try to change maxversion to 3.6 but nothing happened
February 1st, 2010 at 5:37 pm
With “Nightly Tester Tools” you can use TryAgain 3.2 on Firefox 3.6.
But i hope for an update anyhow .
February 5th, 2010 at 8:29 am
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