ProductiveFirefox

Ok, I was lucky (which meant Sarah was good enough to grant me time off for good behaviour) to sneak some extra hours into GTDInbox, to compensate for the time lost to handling clients. And I’m even more pleased to say, this is a pretty big update.

Most significantly, the contentious Dashboard has been removed. Many of you said it took too much space; so I replaced it with a drop down menu instead (props to Paul Thompson/captbunzo for further refining the UI design). Next, I made Reviews (aka saved searches) fully customisable - and even use some special sauce not normally available in Gmail (such as relative time to the current date) - so you can create your own. Finally - and perhaps most significantly for many of you - we finally patched up problems with other addons (and added some advanced options to make sure that you have greater control over GTDInbox’s behaviour in future).

Oh, and the single coolest addition? You can double click stuff! So, when processing your inbox, you can double click the GTD icon (on each row) to Finish it and double right click to Delete it (or shift + double left click to Delete it).
And when you toggle labels using GTDInbox (e.g. add S/Action to a thread), if you double click rather than single click, it’ll toggle the label and then auto-archive it. So you add project/context/reference labels, then double click on S/Action to apply the status and move it out your inbox.

You can download from http://gtdinbox.com/#install or download direct from (http://gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_2-0-8-1.xpi).

(Additional props go to Máté Rémiás who was very helpful in pre-release testing and pinpointing problems with other addons - cheers Máté!).

Update #1 01/05/2008
Hold on to your horses! It looks like there is a small glitch here where the default Reviews are not added (+ Betty is having some Label display problems I’m investigating). 2.0.8.1 will roll shortly…

Update #2 01/05/2008
Okay,  2.0.8.1 is ready. Sorry to those of you who just downloaded 2.0.8, I only noticed the glitch when Betty emailed!

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

Things might be going a little slower than normal (see the last post), but a new version is ready all the same!

GTDInbox 2.0.7 first and foremost fixes the latest Gmail change that was starting to affect some users (all labels were categorised under ‘Misc’). But, it also continues the work that began in 2.0.6 to make it a little more responsive to problems. It is better at informing you when updates are ready, it can notify you if it detects any common internal problems with Gmail (e.g. failing previews, label renaming not working) and advise you how to fix them, and I fixed several bugs with label rules (e.g. if you remove S/Next Action, it now strips the star; and if you turn an Action into Next Action it will work in all cases, and a few other bugs that were blighting it). I haven’t yet fully cracked the FF3b/RTM (acronyms ahoy!) issue, but now only preview/auto-label is affected - i.e. you can now continue to modify labels using the Inbox Popup (right click in the inbox).

You can install it straight into Firefox over at GTDInbox.com

As ever, please head over to the forum to discuss any issues or ideas!

Update
I meant to say a huge thanks to Sebastian Stadil. I wasn’t actually able to experience the bug that was ruining Labels for lots of people, but Sebastian patiently went through the diagnosing process on my behalf, and essentially is the only reason GTDInbox got fixed so fast, so thank you Sebastian!

Update 17/04/2008
For those of you who want a direct link, try http://gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_2-0-7.xpi

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)

My apologies, I overlooked a more subtle bug in the 2.0.5 release caused by the same problem - which many of you were seeing as the Labels box constantly growing and growing… I didn’t actually experience that bug, but nonetheless, I have high hopes this will fix it

I also took the opportunity to make this work with Firefox 3 Beta 5, and continue my experiments with making GTDInbox handle Gmail changes better. More on that in a not-too-distant blog post.

You can manually install the new release from http://gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_2-0-6.xpi

The Safe Way to Update:

1. Download the above .xpi file to your computer
2. In Firefox, click ‘Tools’ and then ‘Addons’.
3. In the window that pops up, select GTDInbox and click ‘Uninstall’
4. Restart Firefox
5. In Firefox, click ‘File’ and then ‘Open File’
6. Select the .xpi that you just downloaded
7. Click ‘Open’
8. The normal installation routine should now begin…

The Fast Way to Update:
Download the XPI then drag it onto Firefox

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:

1. Download the above .xpi file to your computer
2. In Firefox, click ‘Tools’ and then ‘Addons’.
3. In the window that pops up, select GTDInbox and click ‘Uninstall’
4. Restart Firefox
5. In Firefox, click ‘File’ and then ‘Open File’
6. Select the .xpi that you just downloaded
7. Click ‘Open’
8. The normal installation routine should now begin…

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!

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!