If you’re a Google Calendar user like myself you might want to check out this really simple add-on for Thunderbird, which should be available as an official add-on for the coming Thunderbird 3 release.
The Google Calendar Tab
As simple as it sounds, this adds the Google Calendar web interface as a new tab directly into Thunderbird. Creating and viewing events works just as it would in a browser like Firefox. 
If your calendar is setup to show popup alerts you’ll continue to see them from the calendar tab while in other, mail, tabs.
Here’s my family Pinochle game reminder alert showing.
There is no official release of this extension yet, however you could grab the latest XPI, download and install it into the latest (at least rc1) Shredder release.
More Extensions
It’s easy to get started integrating a web application like Twitter, Remember the Milk, and other sites into Thunderbird. Once you get the initial pieces you can start working on better integration into your email conversations.
If you’re interested in creating an extension similar to this one, here are a couple links you probably want to check out:
- Google Calendar Tab source code
- bug 516776 – Make it possible for browser elements to navigate through links/pages
- Thunderbird 3 for Developers – Content Browsing
- Thunderbird Content Tabs
Lightning
This calendar extension only handles a single url for Google Calendar. If you’re looking for actual calendar integration with different calendars, including google calendar, you’ll want to check out the Lightning Calendar extension which also runs inside Thunderbird tabs.
when logging into the calendar tab in tb3 (nightly), it always opens up the google account management tab in my default browser.
Try making sure it’s the latest nightly. The RC1 release and nightly versions will work but other older versions will open up external URLs (and forms) in your browser.
I should probably check that the minVersion is correct to make sure it doesn’t work in those older versions.
Logging in works fine for me on the latest nightly, though I can’t get into the Settings page (clicking Settings just does nothing). Other than that, it works beautifully.
yep, works with the latest nightly (i was a few days behind). thanks bryan!
This is a brilliant idea! I would really like to be able to use it with the Google Apps account on my domain. Maybe somebody could add a preference dialog to the add-on so users can do that?
The code for the add-on is surprisingly simple. I was able to get it to work with a custom domain by changing the “contentPage” value in /extensions/googlecalendartab@momo/chrome/googlecalendartab.jar/googlecalendartab.js. I love it!
Having Google Calendar in Thunderbird is amazing. I prefer the interface to that of Lightning/Sunbird or iCal or Evolution, so this is a great solution for me.
I did have some problems finding the RC1 package. You’ll have to download it from Mozilla’s FTP, as it’s not officially released yet. The RC1 candidates are available, however, and they are required for this to work.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/3.0rc1-candidates
I just got the source and banged out a quick version of it for Gmail. I know that most sensible people would just add a Gmail account to their accounts, but some folks are crazy like me and prefer the Gmail interface, especially for the contacts integration.
http://cad.cx/oss/gmailtab.xpi
I’ll have source available somewhere soon. Perhaps, Bryan, we can some up with some build system so that folks can embed whatever page they want? I wouldn’t mind doing this for Meebo and perhaps Google Reader. I much prefer Thunderbird for IMAP mail checking, but some of its other features lack the web integration that apps have.
This works great, except for the tasks gadget in Google Calendar. Clicking on the tasks link on the left side reveals the tasks gadget on the right side, but it doesn’t list tasks and has no interface widgets inside the gadget thing.
Any ideas as to what might be the problem and/or how to go about figuring that out?
@Blair: We’re looking into the Settings page problem right now. Thunderbird is dropping the javascript: links currently and we might need to do something special to pick those up. I’ve filed a bug on this already.
@Ryan Paul: Yeah, we tried hard to keep it really simple and hopefully it will just get simpler in the future.
@Colin Dean: nice work as well!
Our future plan is to use Jetpack for Thunderbird to help develop these kinds of simpler extensions. As you could see the extension code is almost completely boiler plate and unnecessary. Have a look at Andrew’s Jetpack work so far: http://www.visophyte.org/blog/2009/11/22/thunderbird-jetpack-teasers-words-per-minute-in-compose/
@will: I’m seeing that as well and I’m not really sure what’s going on. It might take some debugging in Firefox to see what they are doing. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head that would cause this. I’m going file a bug on this if I can figure out some more, I’ll check back here if you have anything or email me.
you can also use this great addon:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631
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I’ve pushed my code onto LP.
https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~colindean/+junk/gmailtab
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If anyone can figure out how to make this work with the Google Tasks stand alone page that would be awesome. https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas
I quickly revised it for tasks, but I for some reason can’t get it to work.
https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~colindean/+junk/gtasktab
Feel free to submit a patch if you can get it working!
Thanks a lot! This is very nice.
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Hi! Great addon! Would it be possible to add google apps
Does anyone have developed the tabs with google reader or remember the milk? That would be wonderful… Or with the possibility to add/remove urls and favicons in the settings.
This add-on is an excellent idea! I always found the Lightning+Provider combination to be a bit bothersome, and it’s a bit of a pain to set up initially. This plugin will make all those problems disappear.
Right now, though, none of the javascript links seem to be working (“Delete”, “Settings”, “Refresh”) so it’s not quite as useful as it could be, but I’m sure this’ll get solved soon. Keep up the great work!
Hi Bryan
This is a great idea…
However, it would be even better if Google Gears was supported.
Using that we could see our appointments offline as well.
Greetings
Simon
I just discovered this add-on after Ars Technica gave it a rave review as part of their Thunderbird 3 review. This make life a lot easier. Thanks!
A couple of comments:
1. The initial login appeared to use https, as one would expect, but is the calendar event data transferred via https? I can’t tell. The code in the js file seemed to suggest not. Is there any reason not to use https://www.google.com/calendar/render, which is what I would normally use to render my Google calendar in Firefox?
2. Google Tasks doesn’t appear to load–the strip where tasks are supposed to appear is blank. Is tasks supposed to render or is that a feature that isn’t available through the add-on at the moment?
Opps. I guess should have read some of the earlier posts about tasks. Sorry.
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Great little add-on. It would be nice (For both Calendar and Gmail add-ons) to be able to have multiple accounts in separate tabs open at the same time. I have 4 gmail accounts that I normally use gmail manager in Firefox to keep track of all of them. Currently you can only have one account logged in at a time.
Hallo, in Google Calendar Tab (Thunderbird 3.0) is non-funcional “Tasks” gadget from Google Labs. Please look on this picture:
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/9192/googlecalendartabffvstb.png
If there would be a way to use one’s Google Apps domain with the Calendar Tab add-on I’d be very happy!
I think the problem with the code lies in line 48:
\contentPage\ : \https://mail.google.com/tasks\ };
I think it should be
\contentPage\ : \https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas\ };
Hope that helps. Could you try recompiling it with that change and see it it works?
Awesome, wonderful, perfect! Also awesome because my family also plays Pinochle….
This is the best add-on for Thunderbird yet. I hope the task feature gets fixed. That would make it perfect.
Brilliant. Exported my calendar as a .csv file from Lightning and imported it into my Google Calendar. Worked like a charm.
Nice little thing, can someone add some item under setting where you could set the URL for the login so that one could use it with a domain account? Maybe just accessible through the config editor?
Thanks a lot!
If anyone could fix the google tasks integration, that would be great!
To echo Stephan, the ability to specify the base URL (e.g. “http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/yourownwebsite.com/render” either in a config file or other means would be great!
For personal google accounts, this is a great add-in. Thank you for providing it to us.
I downloaded the googlecalendartab.xpi file from the link provided above, but how do you install it?
go to tools and addons, then extensions, and click on install.
Worked like a charm…thanks!
@Mike, is that what Personal Google Account url’s look like? I don’t have one so I don’t know. But I added some code to the extension so you could change the URL in the extension preferences. I’ll update the extension soon when I have it working well enough.
FANTASTIC App!! Got me away from using the Gmail interface for the first time in over a year! I used to run provider to lightning, but it got to be so clunky after a while with all of my calendars . . . this is just fantastic. However, any thoughts on integrating the ability to use the Remember The Milk gadget plugin lab, or anything else that requires a non-Gcal click?
Again, great job!!!
@Bryan: I’d love an update that would change the URL! It’d be wonderful. Kudos!
@Bryan: indeed, an option to specify the url for google apps hosted domains would be perfect for my needs. It would be fantastic! great work and even wonderful idea!
@Bryan: Is there a way to tweak this myself to work with Google Apps?
I don’t know how to edit/compile an xpi
Alternate solution is to share all your Apps calendars with a Gmail account but that’s a big pain. (I do use Zindus to sync all my contacts across multiple GApps and Gmail accounts….)
This sounds great! Is there a way to accept Outlook appts directly onto the Google calendar, or would I need to forward them to the relevant gmail account?
I modified the extension to open other common websites:
http://electronsoftware.altervista.org/extensions/
In the website I provide above, the original extension is modified to open Google Mail and Docs, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Facebook. If more are needed, please drop a line here…
For NickF: Google Docs in TB is very good extension. Thank you! Is possible modify extension for next URL?
https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas
http://www.google.com/contacts/
Hi there,
is it possible to add rememberthemillk.com ?
Great Extension!
I assume when you say Google Docs you mean Google Apps correct?
So that it will work with calendars in other domains besides gmail.com
Thanks!
I just tested Google Docs and Google Mail tabs.
I guess I miusunderstood what you were doing.
Many google users do not use gmail.com for mail, docs or calendar.
They use their own domains for this.
If you just made the URL to the service editable, we could put in our own and still view the correct calendar, docs, mail page.
Seems to me just one extension with editable URL would do the trick rather than trying to make an extension for each service, of which there are so many!
Thanks