Hi all,
Just got back from a two day break with Sarah to discover Gmail has changed again. That was shockingly bad timing 
I’ll do what I can to have it fixed by the end of today.
I still believe we only see a bad Gmail change once a month; and they normally only take a few hours to address. (Most other problems are created by the fact I’m in a constant development cycle, so bugs do sometimes slip in.)
I understand that at least 500 of you lived through the 3 month beta programme - for which your feedback and patience was truly valuable - but you now demand a more relaxed, bug-free experience. Therefore, stability is the current #1 priority and will continue to be so in the very long term.
Unfortunately, and this isn’t a glib excuse, the truth is that GTDInbox really does bind tightly to Gmail - to do things like ‘preview’ requires some very complex coding - and hence it’s more sensitive to changes in Gmail’s core. I will try to isolate this better, so that if any part of GTDInbox fails in the future, it doesn’t bring the whole app down.
With regards to that complexity… in the very long term, I’ve given the Gmail guys a wishlist for an API that would make GTDInbox - and other Gmail Firefox addons - much more stable (and more powerful). Fingers crossed for that happening.
Everytime an update like this has to be done, I look for common patterns that would make GTDInbox respond to unforseen changes better in the future. I.e. theoretically the situation is improving. However, the best fix is still for me (or someone else who understands the code) to be on hand when the problems start so they can be fixed asap, and then pushed to the blog.
In summary? I’m doing my utmost to create a rock solid and adaptive foundation for GTDInbox so we can begin to build out the very cool features in the pipeline (both those suggested in the forum and the internal plans). And I’m listening!
Fred Thompson Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:01 am
I know it’s an open-source-GNU-license-style opinion that tends to bind all us developer folk together, but I still see a point in charging for something that is taking up a worthwhile portion of time to develop and create.
The forum is full of people who use and love (me included) GTDInbox, and suddenly feel they can’t work without it. If you feel it’s seriously that good, give a little to the productivefirefox website, and maybe when Andy’s working his ass off to fix a Gmail initiated bug in rapid quick time, the donation might make his job a little easier.
i wasn’t going to until I realised I was one of the ones who has just realised I already can’t run my business without it.
Fred.
Imbo Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Keep up the Good fight Andy. It’s great to see someone so dedicated to this.
I don’t know if this is technically possible, and I imagine it might be a lot of coding work, but…. could you modify GTDInbox v1 and v2 so they could be installed as separate add-ins and a user could toggle between GMail’s “Older Version” and “Newer Version” as needed?
Andy Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Thank you Fred for your incisive thought (and your donation!). Healthy revenue is crucial to GTDInbox’s continuing growth.
And Imbo, if you check out http://gtdinbox.com/faq.htm - you’ll see you can download GTDInbox 1.34. This is the last version that works on Gmail 1, and I believe it has a different product-id to GTDInbox 2, so they can be installed side by side.
Imbo Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
… or have the latest version include the v1 code but only run it if ?ui=1 is in the gmail URL?
Diane Ensey Says:
April 2nd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I simply can’t work without GTDInbox and I greatly appreciate the work you do. Thanks, Fred, for reminding me that Andy appreciates more than just a pat on the back!