gContactSync 0.2.0b3 Released

I have released gContactSync 0.2.0b3, and you can download it here.  This version adds the ability to synchronize just the My Contacts group along with a few GUI and logging changes.

Current Features

• All the features of 0.1
  • Synchronizes an address book in Thunderbird with contacts from a Google Account (Gmail)
  • Customizable
  • Groups in Gmail are synchronized with mailing lists in Thunderbird
• Duplicates (multiple contacts with the same e-mail address) are allowed
• Much faster synchronization than 0.1
• Only US English (en-US) until I finish adding features and strings
• Customization of how addresses are synchronized
• Can synchronize just one group (My Contacts), all groups (including My Contacts, Family, Friends, & Coworkers), or all contacts and no groups
• A new fetch-only mode where Thunderbird only receives updates and never sends updates to or deletes contacts from Google.

Synchronizing only My Contacts

Switching from synchronizing all contacts or all groups + all contacts to only one group (My Contacts by default) has a few steps and should be done through the Preferences dialog only to avoid a lot of complications.

When switching, the preferences dialog will:
– Remove all mailing lists from synchronized address books
– Remove all contact from synchronized address books
– Reset the last sync date to 0 for all synced address books

This should not delete anything from Google (but did once before I fixed a bug), but you really should backup all contacts before switching.

I did test this process several times, but there may be bugs, so please let me know if there are any problems, and backup your contacts first. I’ll open new bug reports and leave this closed.

What Features are left for 0.2.0?

I will release at least one more version, 0.2.0rc1, before 0.2.0 with some GUI changes and possibly some bug fixes.  At this point, I think all of the features that will be in 0.2.0 are present

Bugfixes & Enhancements since 0.1.x

Bugs in italics are new since 0.2.0b2r2

• Bug 20891 gContactSync ignores the name in the first login dialog
• Bug 20888 Change untyped phone number labels in the card view
• Bug 20833 Add a preference to disable the new phone number labels in abResultsTreeCols
  
• Bug 20865 Allow synchronizing only one group (My Contacts)
• Bug 20864 The group XML feed is displayed in the verbose log twice
• Bug 20771 Allow name parsing
• Bug 20779 Add a preference to disable auto-delete
• Bug 20853 Too much recursion when the log directory is deleted
• Bug 20852 Illegal rel value due to dummy e-mail address
• Bug 20658 Add version info to the log
• Bug 20739 Add links to the support forum & wiki in the menu
• Bug 20757 Allow read/fetch of Google Contacts only
• Bug 20546 – Search is broken in gContactSync 0.2
• Bug 20644 – Localize all strings in options.xul
• Bug 20656 – Error: gAddressBookBundle is undefined
• Bug 20527 – Avoid HTTP Request errors when the Address Book window is closed
• Bug 20509 – Add Seamonkey support
• Bug 20508 – Consider adding overlay.css to customizeToolbar.xul
• Bug 20487 – Add shortcut to preferences in the Address Book
• Bug 20486 – Improve Address Preferences
• Bug 20352 – Update gContactSync to use Contacts Data API 2
• Bug 20148 – Default groups dont appear in Thunderbird
• Bug 19786 – Support for Google’s ‘Most Contacted’ & ‘Suggested Contacts’

Feedback

I would love to hear your feedback, whether positive or negative (if polite ).  My new preferred method of feedback is through the forum, which will hopefully help me stop forgetting to reply to e-mail and let others add their opinions to feedback.  Please send logs with the error report form or via e-mail and do not put them on the forum.

I am working on updating the wiki with articles on how to use and troubleshoot gContactSync.

I will be adding some polls here and would appreciate any feedback.

Tutorials for 0.2.0

I will probably create some flash tutorials like the original one I had.  This time I will probably host them on YouTube to prevent my website from getting blasted again.