Instructions

General Usage

Once you click the “Track Package” option, a new window (or tab, if you chose that option on the Track Package preferences window) will pop up with the tracking screen at the appropriate company for that tracking number. The extension will automatically decide which company’s page to open based on the format of the tracking number. Don’t see this option in your right-click menu? Check out the FAQ.

History Usage

Once Tracking History is open, you will see a list of all the numbers you’ve tracked using the extension:

To re-track a number from this screen, click on it to select it, and then click the button at the bottom-right corner of the window labeled “Track Selected”. A new window or tab will pop up at the correct company’s tracking page. Note that you can also track multiple numbers from the history window at once by holding down the “Ctrl” button on the keyboard and clicking multiple numbers. When you click “Track Selected” with multiple numbers highlighted, several new tabs will open for each number.

Link all tracking numbers on current page feature

This will bring up the Toolbar Customization window. Find the Track Package icon in this window. It will look like this:

Then, drag-and-drop this icon from the Customization Window to the Navigation Toolbar. You are now ready to use this feature. When you are on a website or email with multiple tracking numbers that are not linked, simply click the Track Package icon in your toolbar. The extension will automatically link all the tracking numbers on the current page to the correct URLs. For example, in this example email, there are several unlinked tracking numbers:

After clicking the Track Package icon, the email now looks like this:

Now the links can be clicked normally to load the appropriate tracking page.

Preferences

The first screen you see is the General tab:

There are two preferences in this tab:

Use tabs instead of windows: When checked, opens tracking links in a new tab rather than a new window.

Use Smart-sense: When checked, the company to use for the tracking number is automatically determined when a number is tracked. When unchecked, each supported carrier is listed in the right-click menu, allowing the user to manually choose which company to use. Unchecking this feature may help some users who regularly experience problems with the extension choosing the wrong carrier for certain tracking numbers.

The second tab is History. This only contains one option, “Max numbers to record”. This controls the maximum amount of numbers that will be stored in the Tracking History feature before old numbers start getting deleted from history to make room for new ones.

The next tab is the Regex tab. This, along with the URL tab, allows you to customize the carriers that the extension supports. This is an advanced feature, and I only recommend those who understand regular expressions try to alter it. See the FAQ for more information on how this works.

The next tab is the URL tab. This is also for customizing the carriers that the extension supports, and is closely related to the Regex tab. See the FAQ for more detail.

The next tab is the Google Maps feature. This feature uses the PackageMapping.com website to provide visual mapping of a package’s progress. It is disabled by default. If you decide to enable it by checking the box, Firefox (or Thunderbird) must first be restarted before the option will appear in the right-click menu. Likewise, if you disable it, the program must be restarted before the option will no longer appear in the right-click menu. Note that the PackageMapping.com website does not support the same carriers as the Track Package extension. See the website for more details. PackageMapping.com is not maintained by the author of the Track Package extension.

The next tab is the Updater tab. Use this tab to update your Regex and URL definitions to the latest available automatically. These should not change too often, so there is no need to update regularly. By default, the definitions are specified by a file hosted on this site. Click the “Update Regex/URL Preferences” button to update to the latest definitions. Do not change the URL unless you know what you’re doing. If you accidentally change the URL, click Cancel to ensure the change is not saved. If you accidentally changed it and clicked OK and want to reset it, reset it to the following:

http://www.trackpackageextension.com/defs/defaults.xml

Finally, there’s the Help tab. This tab simply points you to the site you’re currently reading.

That’s it for the instructions! I hope you enjoy the extension!