Feature request and support thread #2

This is support and discussion thread about my add-ons. Please feel free to post your comments here, including feature requests, questions and bug reports. Please include the following information when you ask questions or report bugs:

• OS
• version of an add-on
• version of Thunderbird
• other installed add-ons
• installed themes
• error messages in an error console (Ctrl+Shift+J)

Supporting add-ons for Thunderbird 68 is discontinued. Thank you for your consideration.

Emacs keybindings for Adobe Brackets (C-d / C-h)

I've started to use Adobe Brackets for Thunderbird add-ons development.

Brackets is suitable for writing WebExtensions/MailExtensions.

Especially live preview and inline css editing are killer functionalities for me.

This is a reason I chose Brackets even though it is less active rather than Atom and Visual Studio Code.

Another important thing for a editor is emacs keybindings.

And, same as other editors, Brackets has the brackets-emacs extension thanks to Ahmad N. Raja.

It is almost perfect for me except for character deleting: C-d (delete after cursor) and C-h (delete before cursor) are missing!

So, I did a few hacks.

brackets-emacs extension with C-d and C-h

https://hogi.sakura.ne.jp/xpi/brackets-emacs-mod113.zip

Please feel free to use it if you are in the same situation as me :)

NOTE:

Remove the original brackets-emacs extension if you've already installed it.

Removing duplicated contacts

Unfortunately, Google Contacts is not stable enough yet and sometimes creates many duplicates. As a workaround for the issue, I've added a function to remove duplicates. Please note it is an experimental function. Try Google's one first and then, if Google cannot remove them, try Google Contacts.

The function checks primary email, second email and display name. If all of them are the same among some contacts, they are recognized as duplicates and removed. It is available in v0.6.40b4. Again, please try it carefully.

Invoke the function from drop down menu of toolbar icon

Little changes in Issue Tracking System

 Issue Tracking System, where bug reports and requests are managed, has received many spams and its spam filter sometimes wrongly rejects your post. It's very troublesome work to find out your post from many spam logs and recover it.

In order to reduce spams in the log, now Issue Tracking System has a "Spam Check" field. By default, "I'm a spammer" is checked. Please uncheck "I'm a spammer" and check "I'm not a spammer". And then submit you post. Otherwise, your post is rejected and not recorded into the filter log; namely, I cannot recover your post.

Thank you for your patience.

Validating Google Contacts Data

Google Contacts will fail to retrieve contacts from Google server if it contains invalid contacts. It is very difficult to find out such contacts from a lot of contacts.

So, I've created a simple validating tool for contacts data. If you cannot retrieve contacts from Google server, please try it by following steps below:

1. Download and install the tool
2. Add "Verify XML" button to a toolbar
3. Open ConfigEditor and create boolean preference "gmcont.dump_raw_xml" and set it true
4. Reload contacts by Google Contacts
5. Click "Verify XML" button
6. Click "Choose" button in the opened form
7. Select
   
   • GoogleContacts/[email address]/contacts/[date] directory for contacts
   • GoogleContacts/[email address]/groups/[date] for groups
   * [date] directory does not exist v0.6.33 and before
   
8. Click OK
9. Invalid contacts will be listed. Confirm their values at Gmail etc. You can see raw data (XML) by clicking "View source" button with selecting a contacts.

Before talking about Tag Toolbar ...

I've recently asked Tag Toolbar many times but some users misunderstood with the Quick filter. Quick filter is a functionality of Thunderbird. It is just a filter and cannot add/remove tags. These are similar but different.

Quick filter



Tag Toolbar (below the toolbar buttons)

Debugging Google Contacts

Google Contacts still has unfound bugs since it is a complex extension. If you find a problem, check the Error Console message. An error message which includes a word "gmcont" is an error of Google Contacts. Please let me know the messages.

Google Contacts also has a verbose mode. If you cannot find an error message in the Error Console, please try the following:

1. Open Config Editor
2. Create a key "browser.dom.window.dump.enabled" as boolean and set it to true
3. Finish Thunderbird
4. Start Thunderbird with -console option
5. Thunderbird will start with console
6. Reproduce the problem and send me messages in the console (mask your personal infomation such as email address before you send it to me)

Thank you for your contribution.

Open a new tab by mouse clicking

I didn't know a way to open new tab except for the context menu in Thunderbird3. So, I implemented a functionality to open a tab by message double-clicking in New Tab Button extension.

But I found that middle mouse clicking opens a message in a tab. It is very convenient method which Thunderbird3 originally has. Try it if you did't know the functionality.

What's New in Google Contacts 0.5.50: Group Mapping

Google Contacts 0.5.50 has some new functionalities. In the post, I briefly show you one of them: Group mapping functionality. Group mapping is the functionality that map a Gmail group to a Thunderbird address book, not a mail list.

By default settings, all contacts and groups in Gmail are mapped into a Thunderbird address book. A group is mapped to a mail list and a contact is mapped to a card. See the image below.

Assume you have four group, My Contacts, Friends, Family, and Coworkers. And you have three contacts in the Friends group. Google Contacts maps them as follows:

This is the default synchronization. Then, let's enable the group mapping functionality. Open the add-on's option dialog and select the "Advanced" tab. You'll find Group mapping section in the middle of the form.

You can choose one of your groups in a Group cell. It shows only system groups. If you map custom group, choose "Other" and input a group name. The image shows an example that Friends group is mapped to an address book in a account. After you select a group, close the form by clicking the OK button.

Then, click the reload button in the address book window or button in the main window. Google Contacts reconstruct address book as follows:

All mail lists disappear and only contacts in the Friend group exist in the address book. In other words, the address book represents the Friends group.

That is the group mapping. If you add a card to the address book, a contact is added to Gmail and joined to the Friends group. As for a delete operation, you can choose a behavior. See the section below the group mapping in the option dialog. You can select one of the followings:

Default setting is "Delete from Google".

You can reduce contacts by using the group mapping. Moreover, you can synchronize a contact without an email address; due to the limitation of Thunderbird group, you cannot manage such a contact by default synchronization. However, it also has a drawback. Since it does not show all contacts in Gmail, you may add a contact which already exists. It may create many duplicates and make contacts management complicated.

Rollbacking Thunderbird address book and Google Contact

Google Contacts has newly had a backup functionality since v0.4.00. It will takes snapshots when you click reload button. It takes them when Thunderbird starts up if you enabled reloading contacts at startup option.

The backup files are stored in [profile_directory]/Google Contacts/[account]/Google/ and [profile_directory]/Google Contacts/[account]/Thunderbird/. The Google directory includes backups for Google Contact and the Thunderbird directory includes backups for Thunderbird address book. By default, it stores 10 backups. If you want to change the number, create gmcont.max_backups and set it to the value by the Config Editor. If you want to disable the functionality, set it to 0.

The both backups are CSV files and they are named as account-yyyymmdd-hhmmss.csv. They can be imported by the import functionalites of Thunderbird and Gmail.

The functionality assume to use the import functionalities of Thunderbird and Gmail, the following fields cannot be restored:

• Thunderbird cards: Screen name, Prefers to receive messages formatted as, and Allow remote images in HTML mail
• Google contacts: Other fields In the More information, photo.
  

Moreover, mail lists in Thunderbird and groups in Google Contacts are not be able to restore either.

It is an experimental functionality. If you find problems or have suggestions, please let me know.

Update 1:
If you cannot import a backup file for a Thunderbird address book due to a character encoding problem, see the post and try Google Contacts v0.4.10.

Changing icons of Priority Switcher

You may think you want to change the priority icons that are added by Priorty Swithcer. I show you the way to change these icons.

1. Copy icons you want to use to the "chrome" directory in your profile. It exsit in C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\chrome on Windows XP. If the directory does not exist, create it.
2. Copy userChrome.css to the same directory. If you already have had the file, append to it.
3. Modify the uri() in the file. If there is an element you want to use default icon, delete the setting for it. For example, if you want to use "lowest.png" for the lowest priority icon, change uri("flag_purple.png") in treechildren::-moz-tree-image(colPSWPriorityIcon, lowest) to uri("lowest.png"). If you don't want to change the icons in the thread pane header ("!" icon), delete the following elements: #colPSWPriorityIcon, #colPSWPriorityIcon[sortDirection="ascending"], and #colPSWPriorityIcon[sortDirection="descending"].

I don't have a skill for creating cool icons and I think the default icons are not so good. If you have nice icons and want to make it default, please let me know. I'll mull over bundling them.

Google Contacts FAQ is updated

I've updated FAQ for Google Contacts. It includes 4 new tips.
Please refer to them if you are in trouble.
I hope they'll help you.

Google Contacts FAQ

This post shows frequently asked questions and answers. Please read them before you ask me.

I've tried some features including Google's Contacts Data API, Thunderbird's address book API, E4X/XMLHttpRequest of JavaScript. They are all new for me. So, it may invoke some problems. Indeed, some bugs have been found and Google Contacts has been updated frequently. Please check the blog regularly and use the latest version. If you find bugs, please let me know error messages in the Config Editor and methods how to reproduce them.

1. It does not retrieve all contacts in Gmail.
It retrieve only about 25 contacts by default. If you have more contacts, set the maximum number of the contacts in the Google Contacts' option dialog. This limitation will be removed in v0.6.34.

2. It does not synchronize at all.
At first, verify there is at least one account checked in the Accounts Window from the options. Then authorize your accounts before you synchronize Thunderbird and Google It is done by clicking Reload button. If uncheck the "Load contacts at startup" option, you have to reload contacts manually before you modify address books.

3. It does not add contacts.
Duplicated email addresses are not allowed in Gmail. Confirm the address you want to add is unique.

4. What's the difference in the Interactive and Batch mode?
The interactive mode publish changes you did in Thunderbird to Gmail immediately . On the other hand, the batch mode does not publish them immediately. The changes are sumitted to Gmail only when you click the Reload button. I recommend you to use the interactive mode for daily use. Use the batch mode when you changes many cards and mail lists at once or you manage them offline.

5. Some groups are not mapped if several accounts are synchronized.
Thunderbird does not allow duplicated mail lists even if they are in different address books. So, if there are groups whose name is the same in accounts, only one of them is mapped and the others are ignored. It is due to a limitation of Thunderbird's database and I can do nothing about it.

6. Do I have to install your IMAP addon, Gmail IMAP Account Setup, too?
No. Gmail IMAP Account Setup is not needed for Google Contacts.

7. What fields are synchronized?
Only fields exist in both Thunderbird and Gmail. Fields only exist in Thunderbird are stored in Google's database so you can share them among Thunderbirds but you cannot see them in Gmail. See here following for the mapping.

8. No contact is retrieved after I deleted the address books created by the addon.
When you delete address books, the accounts to which the address books are bound are set not to synchronize anymore. If you want to synchronize them again, open the addon's option and check the accounts in the "Accounts" section. They will come back after you restart Thunderbird.

9. Where is the Reload button?
It is not added to a toolbar automatically. It exists in the toolbar palette of the both main (messenger) and address book windows. Please add it manually.

10. It sometimes fails to retrieve contacts.
A synchronization takes some times because it sends requests to Google and waits for replies. The time depends on the amount of data, your network conditions and load of Google. Please wait for a few minutes after it started to synchronize.

11. How can I reset it to the initial settings?
You cannot initialize it only by removing and reinstalling the addon. Please reset it as follows:

1. Delete address books created by the addon
2. Open the Config Editor
3. Type gmcont in the filter
4. You will see preferences starts with gmcont; Clear all of them by right-clicking a pref and choose "Reset"
5. Restart Thunderbird

12. Does Google Contacts supports Shredder/Thunderbird3 beta?
It does not support Shredder and Thunderbird3 beta so far. And it will not work even if you install it by modifying install.rdf since APIs for address books are changed in Thunderbird3. I plan to start to implement when Thunderbird3 beta2 is released.
Test builds for Thunderbird3 Beta are available now. Please see the Thunderbird3 Compatibility Testing Thread and try the latest builds.
Now v0.6 or later support Thunderbird3.

13. Does Google Contacts supports Google Apps?
Yes, it does. But it cannot detect your Google Apps accounts automatically, not as it finds POP/IMAP Gmail accounts. So, after you install the addon, open the addon's option dialog and add your Google Apps accounts to the account section manually.


14. Why is a password needed to download Google Contacts?
Google Contacts is placed in the sandbox system in AMO, where experiment addons are stored. You have to sign up AMO account and login to download them. In order to push them into a public space, they have to be reviewed by AMO editors and be approved. I nominated for the review and am waiting for the approval. However, the review takes many times since many addons are waiting for the review.
Google Contacts becomes a public add-on. You can download it without an AMO account.


15. I cannot receive a update notification for Google Contacts.
As I wrote in the question 14, it stored in the sandox of AMO. You will get the notification after it is pushed to a public. Please wait until it is approved.

Attachments will be something like "Part1.2" on Thunderbird with Gmail IMAP

You probably have seen that attachment files of a message became a strange name such as "Part1.2". It seems that it will happen when you open a message with two or more attachments whose name include non-ascii characters and the problem stems from the way of fetching a message.

If you troubles with the matter, set mail.server.serverXXX.mime_parts_on_demand to false, where serverXXX is a server key of a Gmail IMAP server. In case you don't know the server key, type server in the Config Editor's filter. You will find the mail.server.serverXXX.name whose value is an account name of Gmail IMAP. Use the serverXXX for the mime_parts_on_demand option.

Please note that once you set this option to false, entire message including attachments is fetch when you open a message. Therefore, this workaround may lower the performance of your Thunderbird.

For information of this option, refer to MozillaZine knowledge base.

Faceted browsing extension "Seek" and Maximize Message Pane

The SIMILE group at MIT has developed the "Seek" extension which adds faceted browsing features to Thunderbird2. Seek provides UI to filter messages in the thread pane as iTunes does by a genre, an artist name and an album title. A screencast in their site is useful to see its look and feel. I don't think the traditional 3-pane layout is good enough because a preview area is too narrow while I read a message; meanwhile, a preview shares too large space while I search a message. I'm very looking forward to see the evolution of Seek from now on.

If you install Seek, the message pane places at right-bottom of the window. You may think it is too narrow to read a message. The UI is changed to the original one by Ctrl-K but you may think the folder pane and the tread pane are not needed while you read a message. Maximize Message Pane can solve the problem. Download and install Maximize Message Pane 1.0.00b2 then open an extension's option form. You can see the textbox titled "Other:". Input "seekStatusPane,seekPane-deck,seek-mainSplitter" to it (without double-quotations). If you don't need the folder pane while reading a message, check the "Folder pane", too. The Seek's panes are collapsed and the message pane is expanded when you click the Maximize button or press F8 button.

Browsing AMO by Internet Explorer

A download page of my extensions links to AMO(addons.mozilla.org) for security issues. All my extensions are downloadable there. However, there is a problem when you access to the site by Internet Explorer. If you browse the page by IE, you will see several popup and cannot download an extension. It seems that developers of AMO did not check the site by IE because the site mainly provides Firefox extensions.

I recommend you to install Firefox. However, if you could not use Firefox by any reasons, please contact me. I'll send you my extensions.

FAQ about Gmail IMAP Account Setup

I have been asked many questions about Gmail IMAP Account Setup. This post shows frequently asked questions and answers. Please read them before you ask me. The extension set up by following the Google's recommended settins. So, I strongly recommend that you refer to the page, too.

Q1. Why does the extension set the delete model to "Mark it as deleted", instead of "Move it to the Trash folder"?

To mark a message in a folder as deleted means remove the label from the message. On the other hand, to move it to the trash means remove all labels attached to it and move it to the trash. If you set the option to "Move it to the Trash folder", messages will be completely removed even if you only want to remove the copies of the messages. It is very risky setting.

Q2. Why do you recommend not to enable the junk mail control of Thunderbird?

The junk mail control download and analyzes a message to judge the message is a spam or not on IMAP. This will slow down Thunderbird. Moreover, I think there are only a few cases when Thunderbird's spam filter is need to classify a message because Gmail has a smart spam filter. It is not worth lowering the performance of Thunderbird for such cases.

Q3. Why does the extension set not to save a sent message to a sent folder?

A sent message is automatically saved in Gmail and it appears in the Sent and All mail folders when you send it by Gmail's smtp server: smtp.gmail.com or smtp.googlemail.com. So, Thunderbird should not save a sent message.

Q4. Is it possible to synchronize Gmail's labels and Thunderbird's tags?

Gmail's labels are converted to folders and are passed to Thunderbird when Thunderbird accesses to Gmail by IMAP. In order to synchronize labels and tags, Thunderbird should find folders where a message is saved for all messages. Moreover, it should be done periodically because labels may changed on Gmail. I'm not going to make such extension because this will slow down Thunderbird.

Q5. Is it possible to synchronize colors of Gmail's labels and ones of Thunderbird's folders?

By the same reson of Q4, Thunderbird cannot retrieve any color information from IMAP data. It is not possible to synchronize them.

Q6. I already have an account set up by not using the extension. How do I set a star icon to the starred folder?

Please set up by following steps:

1. Install Gmail IMAP Account Setup and restart Thunderbird
2. Right-click on the starred folder and select "Copy Folder Location"; it copies the URI of the folder to a clipboard
   
3. Open Config Editor
4. Create "mail.server.serverXXX.gmailimap_starred" key and paste the copied URI to its value
5. Restart Thunderbird

Please note that you should rewrite the serverXXX by the server key of your account.

Q7. A message said it failed to set up folders. What should I do for it?

Set up the drafts, send, and spam folders by refering to the Google's recommended setting page. For setting up the starred folder, see Q6. For the trash folder, create "mail.server.serverXXX.gmailimap_trash" key and set the folder URI by the same way for a starred folder in Q6. In addition to that, search "mail.server.serverXXX.trash_folder_name" and correct the value by the trash folder name.

This message is shown when a locale for your language is not included in the package. If you are interested in translating the extension, please contact me.

Thunderbird Tips: adding many tags

Tag Toolbar acelerates use of tags in Thunderbird. However, there is one precaution for adding many tags to a message. Attached tags are stored in X-Mozilla-Keys header and a summary file whose file extension is *.msf. The most important fact is the length of the header is limited to 80 bytes. If the sum of lengths of attached tag keys exceeds the limit, overflowed tag keys are stored only in the summary file. Namely, the overlowed tags will disappear if you remove or rebuild the file. For example, if you rebuild a summary file by clicking "Rebuild Index" button in Folder Properties form, overflowed tags in the folder are all gone.

In order to avoid the issue, I suggest two tips. One tip is to make tags whose keys are short. If you create a tag named "long long tag name", its key will be "long_long_tag_name". It costs 18 bytes. If you create a tag named "a" and rename it to "long long tag name", its key is still "a" in spite of its long name. You can save 17 bytes by the latter way.

Another tip is to compact folders. If you compact folders by File->Compact Folders etc., mail data is reconstructed. During the reconstruction, the X-Mozilla-Keys is also reconstructed and all tags are stored in it, exceed the 80 bytes limit. Once all tags are stored in the header, it is OK to remove/rebuild the summary file. However, there is one note for it. The reconstruction will be conducted on the folders in which the messages are removed or moved.

I'm glad you could enjoy tagging messages with these tips and Tag Toolbar.

How do you install add-ons to Thunderbird?

I am sometimes asked that I could make an extension to install add-ons to Thunderbird easily. AMO says you should download an add-on to your hard disk then install it by the form from Tools->Add-ons menu. Many users may think it is annoying. So, I suggest you a better way.

It is very easy way. Firstly, open a web page in which a link for an add-on you want to install exists by Firefox and open the Thunderbird's add-ons form from Tools->Add-ons. Then, drag and drop the link to the add-ons form. You don't need to download the add-on to your hard disk. I think it is less annoying than the way AMO says.

I tested it on Windows XP. I don't know whether it works or not on other OS.
Anyway, AMO seems to know the issue and work to improve it. Think it as a workaround.

Tip for installing extensions to Seamonkey

"Get before Send" and "Check and Send" are Seamonkey compatible. So, you can install them to not only Thnderbird but also Seamonkey. You can download Seamonkey compatible builds from my homepage.

However, there is a problem when you install to Seamonkey; You may see xul error after the install. It depends on how you installed Seamonkey. If you installed Seamonkey by Windows installer, the error may appear; by zip is OK. The bug have been filed as Bug 396908.

If you see the error after you install my extension to Seamonkey, uninstall Seamonkey and install it again by zip archive.