Just a quick note to apologise for the fact I’ve not been in the forum as often as I would have liked, or rather, I’ve not been talking as much as normal. I have been listening! The reason is simply that time is really tight at the moment, and I’ve been using every spare minute to actually work on GTDInbox, which will pay off with the very imminent 2.0.8…
It’s no secret that I think GTDInbox and RememberTheMilk work well together, with GTDInbox providing much needed structure and faster handling to the inbox; and RememberTheMilk for general tasks.
However, it seems our two addons fight over the same bit of territory in Gmail. Prior to 2.0.7, that meant GTDInbox lost out, and for affected users Preview/AutoLabel would not work. I thought I’d fixed it in 2.0.7, and indeed, I made GTDInbox more stable; but broke RTM in the process.
I’ve emailed RTM several times to try and resolve this. GTDInbox is open source, but RTM encrypts their code. Therefore I’m very much fighting the issue blind. Unfortunately, right now RTM do not wish to let me look at their code, or nor does it seem fixing the issue is a high priority for them. I hope this will change, but regardless, with the release of an improved Gmail API all problems should vanish anyway.
In the meantime, as of 2.0.8 (coming soon) I’ve added a new option to GTDInbox. You will be able to choose whether GTDInbox is dominant (and more stable); or whether it plays second fiddle to other addons, making them more likely to work; but at the expense of possibly losing the Preview/AutoLabel features.
I apologise again for the slower rate of development, I still have another few weeks of intense client work - but I managed to squeeze in time over the weekend; so I hope to get the next release out this week!
Update 28/04/2008
John Wilson, a well-known former London VC has a more personal take on this situation over at Remember The Milk’s Gone Sour
I wanted to take a moment to give everyone an update on what’s happening over here. There is a temporary blip to development as I’ve had to go back to 45 hour/week client work, which has frustrated development on GTDInbox. This shouldn’t last more than another week and things will return to normal.
GTDInbox itself appears to continue to have an issue when certain other extensions are installed, on Firefox 3. I’m not sure if this is a Firefox 3 issue; but I’m trying a series of different ideas to resolve it. Meanwhile, with the help of Máté Rémiás I’ve been working on the update announcement/install procedure to make the frequent improvements easier to swallow!
Another thing I want to do before going much further is tweak the websites. I want GTDInbox to have its own blog, because soon there will plenty of stuff to discuss re: inbox/email innovation. I want ProductiveFirefox.com (or maybe a rename to ProductiveFox.com) to be simplified to a basic hub, connecting the various product websites, blogs and of course, the dear old forum. And I’m interested in pursuing a simple blog to shine a light on the world of Firefox addons, more of which in a new blog post (I’ll be looking for really passionate/knowledgeable people to help with this!).
The basic point of all the website shuffling is to increase the effectiveness of communication/discussion within our community; and decrease any complexity between the websites. Hopefully all that should be done within a day or two (of commencing it, that is!).
Once the combined shackles of ineffective websites and clunky GTDInbox updates are dealt with; things will hopefully get really exciting as we discuss and implement some real innovations for inbox and task management.
It looks like an oft-rumoured/requested Google Task List is on the cards, which can only be good news. For one, I hope it will establish a ’standard’ UI for task/calendar integration that we can adapt with GTDInbox.
It also clearly defines the role of GTDInbox. Common tasks can be handled by Google Tasks or RTM (RememberTheMilk), and inbox tasks (and general inbox management) can become the main role of GTDInbox.
The latest coverage (and the reason for this post), is TechCrunch’s blog post, http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/11/google-launching-todo-list-product/. I’m not sure if it’s regular TC negative commenters, but I find it quite interesting that people are declaring task management in Gmail to be a forgotten problem. It’s probably more RTM’s issue than ours, but I still see value in Google doing this; because they make ubiqituous tools. A pure task management tool is only useful if you can access it wherever you go. It’ll be even better if it has an API that we can easily manipulate (hint hint) 
I fixed the impact of the last Gmail change that stopped GTDInbox loading, and it was embarrassingly trivial (just a line of code to change!). So I took the opportunity to add a new ‘emergency traffic light’ feature - an amber or red bulb that can be remotely activated if there is a problem in the future. It’s really for those who otherwise would not read the blog, as a means to reassure regular users that “we know GTDInbox may be having problems, and we are working on it”, and to help them manually download a patch.
You can manually install the new release from http://gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_2-0-5.xpi
Update
I forget sometimes that not everyone has manually installed the XPI before - sorry!
Fortunately, it is quite straight forward. This is the really safe way of doing it:
I’ve just had a spark of an idea I want to mention. GTDInbox will always be a niche product - a Firefox addon that only works with Gmail - but to speak of it like that misses a bigger idea. GTDInbox is small, light and independant; and so it has the power to innovate in a way that a mainstream app cannot. It’s that innovation I want to really focus on in creating and debating GTDInbox. And later, if any onlookers think they can take some of the better concepts and make them work in other mail apps (like Outlook) - or if the ideas were adopted by mainstream applications (like Gmail itself) - that would be a truly fantastic outcome to all our endeavours.
There’s no real point to this post, other than a desire to convey the thought that we - our little community here - should almost consider it a duty to be creative with how we grow GTDInbox.
I’ll follow up in a few days with some new posts that try once again to get to the bottom of the problem with email, so that we can sharpen our collective mindset on how to fix it - all input will be very welcome!
Just wanted to say a little thank you to everyone who’s mentioned GTDInbox since it’s launch last week; it’s been a little rougher than I would have liked but the write up’s were really incisive, they got it!
(more…)
GTDInbox was successfully accepted by Mozilla yesterday (thanks guys, the reviews you gave were awesome, I’m very flattered!). So I wanted to welcome all our new users, and give everyone an overview of the current situation. Actually, before I go any further, I should extend that welcome to say that I encourage you all to make yourselves at home… GTDInbox is a very user-centric app, with an active forum/blog where everyone plays a role in the direction, development and bug fixing of GTDInbox. Never hesitate to get involved!
So first, a little history. GTDInbox 2.0 is a complete rewrite of the original GTDInbox. It’s far more refined and focused on common work flows, and rather than just task management, it now aims to make your inbox truly manageable.
GTDInbox 2.0 is designed to work purely with Gmail 2. Not everyone has Gmail 2 yet (you can tell by checking to see if you have a link to ‘Older Version’ in the top right of Gmail, near ‘Settings’). You enable it differently whether you use personal Gmail, or Google Apps. For more information on this, please see the FAQ.
Gmail itself is in a great state of flux. It’s the curse of working over it, but one I readily accept. This means that there may be days where GTDInbox doesn’t work 100% because Gmail has changed. When this happens, if you leave a message in the Bug Tracking section of the Forum, I will get it fixed asap.
Another common - and related - problem we have is that not everyone’s Gmail is the same. Google rolls out updates to different users at different times. So, people may experience a problem before I do. The other problem is clashes with other Firefox addons. We just have to deal with this on a case by case basis. If you use Google Apps and have a problem, it really helps if you can temporarily set me up an account so I can experience problems first hand.
GTDInbox 2.0 is just the start of the journey. There are plenty of improvements and improved functionality still to do. Very shortly, we will be switching to a system whereby supporters get early access to new releases, access to the beta programme, and as a consequence, a little more impact on how it develops. So, if you want to continue the great supportive community tradition GTDInbox has enjoyed, please look at the Donations page.
And for those of us who’ve gone through the beta programme, you’ll be pleased to know new feature development can now begin again (hopefully no more releases dedicated soley to bug fixing!).
2.0.1 - I hope - is the public release! There have been lots of little tweaks and bug fixes (see http://gtdinbox.com/changelog.htm).
Unlike before, it can now be downloaded direct from Mozilla, but there is a little proviso. It is currently sandboxed, which means you need to log in to get it. So, you need to,
We need to make it public, which means it needs your reviews!
So, once you’ve signed in, please rate the extension (be kind! - well, be fair - it’s a permanent record 
) by clicking ‘Add Review’ near the bottom of the https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3209
I appreciate this is a bit of a chore - I’m actually really surprised how clunky a process this still is - but your reviews are a requirement to getting the new release accepted, so it is really appreciated.
Thanks everyone,
Andy
Update 17/03/2008
I meant to add, Jim Passmore delved into the code and fixed up some Review bugs - including one that was especially stupid (I’d some how calculated 3 months as 63 days… I know I know). So thank you Jim!
Hi all,
Apologies for the slight delay in getting this ready, things have been hectic over here. Fortunately, it came just at the right time as I believe Gmail has just upgraded again, so this version can fix the problems that arose.
Right, this is for all intents & purposes the final 2.0 release of GTDInbox. Awesome I’m sure they’ll be one more patch before I upload to Mozilla, but I wanted everyone here to get at it right now.
As per usual, you can download it from http://gtdinbox.com/changelog.htm (press F5 if you don’t see 2.0.0), discuss it on the forum or email me.
What’s changed? Well, I fixed all the major problems, touched up the UI in a few places, implemented some of the good suggestions that have been coming in, and basically tried to round it out.
I’ll be doing a proper release either Tuesday or Wednesday next week, I hope a few of you will be around then to welcome the newcomers with me
Update 15/03/2008
You might notice the blog (and ProductiveFirefox.com in general) has had a bit of a face lift. Paul Thompson (aka CaptBunzo) informed me that I was letting the side down with sloppy design workmanship so I took myself to task and gave it a lick of paint Cheers Paul!
Copyright 2008 Andy Mitchell
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