Network Lighthouse

Development has been slow recently,  with a new job, a trip to London and moving house I haven’t had much time to work on SocialMail.

Hopefully now that things are starting to settle down I can get focussed on taking SocialMail further.  I really would like to get some community input as I don’t want to waste my time developing features that are of no interest to the users.

At the moment my thoughts are (in know particular order):

• More Integrations with social networks, I am seriously considering the OpenSocial based sites as I can cover multiple sites with minimal additional code.
• A user interface rework, scrapping the sidepanel and making socialmail more integrated into the Thunderbird interface.  For example, moving the profile picture into the header bar of the preview pane.
• Changing the API model so that new users don’t need to acquire their own rapleaf api key (discussed below)

The last one is likely to be the most contreversial but I think will have the greatest impact in terms of enabling new users to use SocialMail.  At present I have between 10-20 downloads per day, not to shabby, however this isn’t translating into new users well, as I am only seeing slight growth week on week.  I am of the belief that part of the reason is that users can’t be bothered with getting their own RapLeaf key, which takes a day or two depending on how busy they are.

What I’d like to do is pre-provision SocialMail with the ability to work out of the box, no need to register to get at least a few api calls a day.   At present I am talking to RapLeaf to work out exactly how this can be acheived and hope to come up with a workable solution and hope to come up with something in a few days.

Outside of those ideas, are there any suggestions on what people would like to see from SocialMail, just keep in mind, if it’s a request to integrate with another socialnetwork/site then an existing public API is a must,  I aim to keep clear of private APIs and will not write code for scraping content directly from sites.

-Daniel

It’s been a few weeks since SocialMail 0.13 was released and I’ve been busy in the mean time.   If you’ve read my last few posts you’ll know that the interface as been redone to allow a lot more information to be displayed while keeping the most recent details up front.

The interface has been converted to a tab based layout which allows us to have different screen areas for each information source, while allowing the front tab, to show the latest details from each section (user configurable).

SocialMail v0.2 also includes the first cut of twitter functionality, which once enabled adds a new tab which show the last 10 or so (configurable) tweets from whoever you’re viewing.   Users can now ‘tweet’ directly from Thunderbird with the new ‘Update Status’ functionality which will ultimately allow sending updates to multiple micro-blogging sites (twitter, myspace, facebook, linkedin, etc) as modules for those sites are added.

All  in all, a lot has gone into this SocialMail update, which is why it’s taken longer than anticipated, so I hope you all enjoy it and look forward to hearing your experiences with it.

So here it is: SocialMailv0.2.1

(NOTE: This is a small update to address 2 isssues raised by Larry)

Have Fun,

Daniel

It’s been a while since I’ve last posted an update on SocialMail so I figure it time to let everyone know what I’ve been working on.

One of the issues with the current release is that there is to much information to fit in the sidepanel.  If you have a contact that has data in each of the boxes then it forces the thunderbird window to expand, in my case (and I’m sure many others) this means off the end of the screen.    This issue is set to become much worse as I add functionality and new datasources.  To resolve this the interfaces has been reworked to use tabs to seperate the key parts, while keeping the most recent information on the first tab for easy access/reference.

Switching to a tab based layout has made things a lot clearer and will help with the integration of new data sources,  each of which can now have it’s own space to render as it needs.   Extra elements can be added as modules, without have to mess with the main code, so it will be theoretically possible for others to write SocialMail modules to extend it with specific extensions (much like SocialMail extends Thunderbird).

Twitter integration is now also well underway, with tweets being automatically displayed when you view an email from a contact who uses twitter.   Functionality to be able to post (re)tweets/direct messages/etc isn’t in yet, but thanks to the guys who wrote twitterHelper.jsm, shouldn’t take to long.

One last thing, for anyone familiar with the workings of XUL.   When I have a listbox which has the listcell-iconic style applied to it’s listitems, they aren’t selectable.  Why is that and how do I fix it?

Update: In answer to my own question, the issue is because I should have been using a listitem-iconic style not listcell-iconic.  The listcell styles don’t support selection since you typically want to select the whole item not just one cell.

-Daniel

After a bit of work the SocialMail code has been tidied up and I’m ready for another release.   But this is more than just a admin release, it’s also bringing a few new features:

• Context menus for most parts of the sidepanel, includes
  • Add, modify, remove phone numbers & urls
  • Copy any of the displayed data
  • Save attachments
• Skype integration
  • You can now launch a skype call directly from socialmail by double clicking on any collected (or added) phone number in the sidepanel.  You need to enable this in the SocialMail options window and specify a default Country for numbers that don’t know have an international prefix.   Of course you need to have Skype installed for this to work.

I hope you all enjoy this release, please post your comments to let me know how its working for you.  Download here: socialMail-0.12

-Daniel

SocialMail v0.1 has just been released and published to AMO. For those new to the site, the goal of SocialMail is to enhance the email experience and bring social networking features to Thunderbird.

Not much to note in this version from the previous releases, mainly house keeping changes, a few bug fixes and the most visible change being our new logo.

Thanks have to go out to my brother who did the core design and inspiration for the logo and my sister-in-law (not his wife) for the color scheme and refinement of the original concept.

GET IT HERE socialMail-0.1

This marks the end of what I wanted to accomplish in the first phase of SocialMail development, all the core functionality is there.   That doesn’t mean that development is stopping!  From here we are moving to increase the social networking functionality, bringing the networks into the email experience.

Here’s a few thoughts for what is likely to come in future versions (no promises though)

• Updating status on facebook/myspace/twitter/etc simultaneously from Thunderbird
• Viewing a contacts tweets when viewing emails from them
• Viewing contacts status and details from the individual networking sites.
• Fixing defects as they’re reported

By no means is this definitive, I’d appreciate any suggestions on what you would like to see in future versions.

One last word on release strategy,  I’ll try to post  frequent updates to this site as new features are added, but I will only update the AMO listing when fixing defects or minor feature enhancements to the current 0.1 stream.  This way I won’t be causing unnecessary updates to users who want a stable experience but those who want the bleeding edge (and it has that name for a reason) can see what I’m working on as it gets done.

I hope you enjoy this release, please post your feedback, good or bad (as long as its constructive).

-Daniel