ProductiveFirefox

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!

Fixed a problem experienced by @edgautier and Scott Shuster where clicking various icons caused the Next Action label to be toggled incorrectly, and - having apparently had success in fixing the ‘Oops’ error - tried to tackle the new problem whereby sometimes GTDInbox simply turned its back and steadfastly refused to load

Download it from http://gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_2-0-4.xpi
As ever, discussion is more than welcome over at the forum!

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!
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Just a quick update, this fixes a conflict with the Sxipper extension, and tries again to fix the Oops error for those users who are still suffering with it. Download it from http://gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_2-0-3.xpi

As ever, discussion is more than welcome over at the forum!

Over the coming week I will be principally addressing the core of GTDInbox. For some highly complex reason (complex in the sense it’s not easily repeatable), GTDInbox sometimes causes the ‘Oops..’ error in Gmail. Actually I cannot even prove this, it may not be GTDInbox, but in the name of getting things done I will still analyse it fully!

This will be followed by looking into the most obvious usability improvements. This means a better dashboard, more feedback on what you’re seeing and less space usage - all with the intent of making it faster & easier to interact with.

I’ve asked a friend within the Gmail team about the timeline for a better Gmonkey API. If such an API can be provided, it means GTDInbox will be more stable, more maintainable, and thus can be more confident in building exciting new features. Fingers crossed for good news there.

The Pro account for donators is currently in active development, and I’m hoping to see something tangible for that soon.

And the future… well the future is really based on really thinking out the modern problems and solutions to the email inbox. Email isn’t going away anytime soon, and so we really should be focusing on taking brave steps to fix it; not simply replace it. GTDInbox should be a pioneer in improving our inboxes.

All ideas for future development should ideally go into the forum (blog comments are not the best place - they get forgotten!), specifically the Feature Requests board. Obviously I only have my own personal experiences on email (see Fixing Email), so all our contributions are very welcome in the ongoing discussion.

Ok, I hold my hands up, the handful of kindly beta testers with system glitches scaled rather badly into more than a handful of angry users! It’s largely thanks to Jack (jpnelson40 on the forum) that I figured out a potential cause of the problems. You’ll notice I said potential there… I still cannot replicate the actual issue myself, but I have a hunch that a change I made prior to 2.0.1 - ironically to increase robustness ahead of the public release - could well have made it less stable. I’m feeling rather foolish right now

So to make ammends, I’ve got a (fairly extensive) patch release here, and I hope it does the job.
Broadly speaking, it is attempting to fix the ‘Oops… system encountered an error’ problem, muting unwanted beta debugging messages, and disabling Korean language support which must have been irritating the living daylights out of our Korean friends

Download it from http://gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_2-0-2.xpi, discuss it over in the forum, or email me!

(By the way, I’m up against the clock to get this out - there are more updates to come soon - but right now I wanted to address the show stopping issues. If you don’t have any issues, you might want to wait until you upgrade).

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,

• Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3209
• Create an account or sign in
• Update your account settings, by clicking ‘My Account’ (near the search box), checking ‘Show Sandbox’ in the account screen, and then clicking Save
• Return to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3209
• Click ‘Complete Version History’, and then on the Versions page, click ‘Sandbox’ at the top (to the left of the search box) - or just try and follow this link, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addons/versions/3209/status:1
• Click ‘Show License Agreement’, then on the new page ‘Accept and Install’

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!