Network Lighthouse

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

Well it took a bit of doing, but Social Mail 0.0.7 is out now.   As promised this version includes the email/time graph so you know when your contacts are most likely to respond to you.  Here’s how it looks with wAvatar selected as the default image.

That’s the last major feature for the v0.0 series.  Once v0.1 is out I’ve got some ideas on how to further integrate the social networks into the interface, but before I start on them I’m hoping to have some suggestions on what people would like to see in future releases.

The next version v0.0.8 will address focus on making the upgrade process simpler, fix any bugs that are reported and add any small feature requests that come in.

Get socialMail-0.07

-Daniel

It’s been a busy few days coding, always trying to move SocialMail forward, while at the same time trying to get Rapleaf 4 Thunderbird through the AMO approvals process.

In the last few days I’ve had a chance to add to features that were requested by users, and as they were both on the roadmap I’m jumping right over 0.0.5 to 0.0.6.

Here’s what’s new:

• Gravatar support, including fallback modes of Identicon, wAvatar & MonsterID
• Improved handling if a profile image is unavailable
• Option to not retreive a profile image
• Not setting a Rapleaf API key or turning off the Social Networking display now prevents calling the rapleaf service entirely.

Get it here: socialMail-0.06 , if you need help installing please look at the installation instructions.

Important Note: If you are upgrading from 0.0.4, there is no need to delete the database file as there have been no schema changes.

As always your feedback/comments are most welcome.

The road to becoming an approved Thunderbird plugin is a long and arduous one to be sure, but we are almost there.   The sole reason for this release is to move further along that path.

After submitting for approval, the reviewer came back that the code needs to be encapsulated in a javascript object to avoid conflicts in the global namespacce.   This makes sense, and is something that I was vaguely aware of although at a primitive level, however not something I had any idea about how to do.   The reviewer was thoughtful enough to include a link to an article that explained it all.

So I spent the day rewritting parts of the code and the fixing all the problems I caused in the process and now a new version is out in the wild.

You can get it here.

If you want to help with getting approval I could realy use some more comments, either here or on AMO (the above link).  Let me (and the reviewers) know what you think of the plugin and how it makes your email experience better.

-Daniel