Test Release 0.1a2 Out

I have just released another alpha (testing) version of gContactSync with some bug fixes and a few new features.

New Features

• Mail Lists in Thunderbird and Groups in Google Contacts are now synchronized.  You can rename, add, or remove groups or add or remove the cards to and from them.
• There is a new preference for disabling automatic synchronization.  Manual synchronization is possible by clicking on the Sync button in the Address Book’s toolbar.

Bug Fixes

• During the first use, a directory named “Google Contacts” was made before the name was chosen.
• Viewing and copying cards from an LDAP server sometimes caused errors.
• Supporting Google-hosted accounts
• A few other small fixes

The transition from 0.1a1 to 0.1a2 – Important

You must take a few steps to move from version 0.1a1 to 0.1a2 since there are so many changes.  These steps are very important!

1. Backup your address books and Google Contacts again.
2. Perform one last synchronization and then rename the synchronized address book (Right-click it -> Properties and choose a new name).  Don’t update the preference for the name now or after re-installing the extension.
3. Close the Address Book window
4. In the main Thunderbird window go to Tools -> Add-ons and select gContactSync and press the Options (Preferences) button.
5. Click the Remove auth token button and close the Preferences window.
6. Uninstall gContactSync
7. Download and install the new version.  The flash tutorial hasn’t changed, so install it like last time.

Known Bug

When uploading a newer version of my flash tutorial on my slow home connection an automatic synchronization started and failed (status bar read Syncing…) leaving this in the Error Console:

Error: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80040111 (NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE) [nsIXMLHttpRequest.status]“  nsresult: “0×80040111 (NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE)”  location: “JS frame :: chrome://gcontactsync/content/HttpRequest.js :: anonymous :: line 115″  data: no]
Source File: chrome://gcontactsync/content/HttpRequest.js
Line: 115

For now, I am not sure what to do about it.  If this happens, try not to sync while uploading a file.  I was unable to view any webpages in Firefox when this happened.

Bug 413260 (Thunderbird 3 trunk build only)

It looks like Bug 413260 has nearly landed, but I cannot claim that this version supports the patch.  Parts do, but I have not tested many of the new features with it.  If you are using Thunderbird 2, 3.0a1, or 3.0a2 this doesn’t affect you in any way.

Synchronizing Addresses – Your Thoughts

When I woke up this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see several e-mail messages about my extension.  After seeing the web traffic for my website rise from a dozen or so visitors per day to nearly 500, I discovered that several sites have written about the extension even though it is still in the testing stage in both English (ghacks.net, Lifehacker, etc.) and Spanish, which, fortunately, I can read (Incubaweb, VisualBeta.es).  After reading the Spanish articles, I am now wondering if I should attempt to add a Spanish locale…  The only problem is that we don’t exactly talk about synchronization and e-mail clients much in Spanish class so I would have to learn some new words.

Currently, synchronizing addresses with gContactSync is painful as the reviews mention, especially if you have a lot of contacts.  It involves editing every contact in Google with an address.

This technically isn’t necessary, and if you skip doing it the Map It feature in both Gmail and Thunderbird will still work.

For example, here is a standard US postal address:

1234 E. Sesame St.
New York, NY  10001

If the address looks like that in Gmail, Thunderbird will display it as shown, but if you look in the Edit Card Dialog, you will notice that only two address fields are full: Address and Address Line 2.  If you can sleep at night knowing that the city, state, zip (and possibly country) are all on one mislabeled line everything should sync as expected.

If the address has three lines, like the sample below, things change slightly:

Apt. #2
1234 E. Sesame St.
New York, NY  10001

Now, the first line in Thunderbird is Apt. #2, the second line is 1234 E. Sesame St, and the “City” is New York, NY  10001.  It won’t necessarily cause any problems, and the Map It button will still work, but the labels are incorrect.

One solution would be to remove the Address, Address Line 2, City, State, ZipCode, and Country textboxes and replace them with a text area that allows multiple lines like Google has.  If there is no value for that address, I could populate it from the old fields either separated with newlines or formatted US-style.  I am interested in hearing some opinions on this idea.

Update: Instead of replacing the textboxes, I could add a text area for home and work address in a different tab (similar to the Other Address text area) that allows multiple lines and directly synchronizes with Google.  If the area is blank, it would be filled at sync time by combining the 6 fields (Address, Address2, City, State, ZipCode, and Country).  In the card view on the bottom I could hide the original if the new address field is present.  This is the solution currently used.

What are your thoughts on synchronizing addresses?

Disabling Automatic Synchronization

I completely forgot to mention that it is possible to disable automatic synchronization until I received a question about it.  There are two preferences that control this: Synchronize interval and Initial sync delay.  If you want to disable automatic synchronizing completely, set both of those to 0.  Alternatively, you can just disable all but the first auto sync when you open your Address Book window by setting Synchronize interval to 0.  If just Intial sync delay is set to 0 then there will not be any automatic synchronization until after you press the Sync button and the next sync is scheduled after the interval expires.

There is a Sync button added in the Address Book toolbar that you can use to synchronize manually.

The next test release will have a checkbox to disable automatic synchronization.

gContactSync and Hosted Google Accounts

I received feedback from two users who use Google Apps for your Domain saying that they cannot authenticate.  The reason for this is a mistake on my end that only allowed Google Accounts (ending in gmail.com).  I believe I have fixed this, although I do not have a way to test it.

If you want to fix it yourself before the next release, follow the steps below

1. Delete the synced address book (Google Contacts) and close the Address Book window
2. Go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Preferences/Options and click the button to remove your authentication token.
3. Close Thunderbird
4. Find your Thunderbird Profile Folder
5. Go to the Extensions folder and then the gcontactsync at pirules.net folder
6. Open the content folder
7. Edit gdata.js with your favorite text editor
8. Find this text shown below around line 50 and replace accountType=GOOGLE with accountType=HOSTED_OR_GOOGLE
9. Save the file and re-open Thunderbird and the Address Book window
10. Login

  makeAuthBody: function(aEmail, aPassword) {
    return "accountType=GOOGLE&Email=" + aEmail + "&Passwd=" + aPassword +
             "&service=cp&source=Josh-gContactSync-0-1a1";
  },

Support for Mail Lists and Contact Groups

I have finished adding support for synchronizing Thunderbird’s mail lists and Google’s contact groups in gContactSync.  It can do everything one would expect, such as reflecting changes in the contacts contained within groups, add/remove groups, etc. except if you rename a mail list or contact group the complementary group or mail list is not renamed (but still syncs fine).  UPDATE: It now detects if you have renamed a group or mail list and renames the other group/mail list.

I will hopefully finish testing and documenting the new code soon and release a new, improved test extension.  The ‘pencils down’ date is near (suggested date of August 11 to cleanup the code, deadline of the 18th).

Please let me know what you think about the existing test version so I can address any issues before the next release.  There are a few bugs I have since found and fixed.  One of the more serious bugs I found was contacts updated in Gmail after August began didn’t always update in Thunderbird, but, afaik, it has been fixed.