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.
I thought about having an editable URL, but that involves a bit more work and time which I don’t have at the moment. In particular a preference box would be needed, and some sort of alghorithm to find out the favicon. So for the moment, just static (fix) websites is all I can do, but if someone else would like to further develop the editing feature….
Thanks…the extension for Facebook works great and saves me from logging on (which I do anyway every day) and keeps everything in one place. How bout one to open Twitter on a TB3 tab?
Thanks again!
@Florian
I am working on an extension for rememberthemilk. Unfortunately, because of the way RTM is structured, upon login a tab in firefox is opened (instead of TB). I am trying to work around this limitation.
@mgiven
An extension for twitter is now available here:
http://electronsoftware.altervista.org/extensions/
@Zdenek
Google contacts is now available. I made also a Google Tasks, but for unknown reasons, it opens only a blank page. If I right click on the blank page and select “open in an external browser”, the google tasks page works just fine, so it seems a problem with thunderbird.
Also added: Google Voice and Google Wave.
Wow Nick, you are really making my desktop life easier!
Thanks…I now have Thunderbird 3, which automatically opens tabs for Google calendar, Facebook and Twitter. These are things I’d do every day anyway, but saving the steps to open them and to keep them all on tabs in one program is VERY nice.
I read on this thread earlier that a few already asked for a tab for rememberthemilk, and I’d love that as well since the google tasks don’t seem to be working yet. How about another web based task program that also sync’s with Google calendar already. I’m throwing out http://www.gqueues.com as a suggestion. I’ve used it for awhile and it might be a good Google Calendar task backup plan until (if) that works with TB3.
Thanks for all your work (and quick work!)
Michael
@mgiven
No problem, I am glad it works for you.
I quickly made one for GQueues (available on the usual site). Modifying the source to the desired website is actually rather simple…
Regarding rememberthemilk and google tasks, I seem to be hitting (as others before me) some roadblocks. If I have more time, I’ll give it another shot.
Nick … sorry I took so long to respond. The url I gave you on 12-Dec is the url for a google hosted domain calendar. The small business I support in my spare time uses the google calendar app to track appointments. And it allows multiple employees to update the business calendar with appointments and such.
Hope this helps.
– Mike
I get a message that a google calendar already exists for me. What do I need to do to connect to this existing calendar?
Thanks,
Venu
Pingback: Google Kalender mit Thunderbird benutzen « Antary
Also added: Google Voice and Google Wave.
Well Thunderbird 3.0.1 has disabled it and I can’t find any way to override the version checking.
Michael, if you unzip the xpi, you can alter the install.rdf file and change the version check in there. Once you’ve made the change, repack it and install it.
That worked…thanks. Any chance of this plugin getting official distribution and updates through mozilla’s site? It seems pretty solid to me. The only problem I ever have is sometimes it doesn’t open when I start thunderbird, and I have to click tools, google calendar tab to open it.
All, I changed all the addons available here:
http://electronsoftware.altervista.org/extensions/
to be compatible with any version of Thunderbird 3.0.*.
You may need to download them again and reinstall them…
Is there no way to get the tasks to work?
NickF, the links on your site are a little messed up. The links for the Google Wave and Google Voice XPIs both point to googlecontactstab.xpi. The correct XPIs are there, they’re just not correctly linked.
That said, thanks for putting those XPIs up. Now I’ve got all my communications stuff set up inside Thunderbird – very nice.
Colin,
Thanks and apologizes for the bad links. I fixed and now the are all supposed to work.
any news about the addon for google apps calendar? (custom domain)
Love the addon! Great job! Thanks so much for all the hard work you’ve done!
I’m running Thunderbird 3.0.2pre on Ubuntu 9.10, and your addon has worked flawlessly since I started using it a while back. This morning it stopped working, saying it’s not compatible. Not sure why it would all of a sudden stop working like that. It’s weird.
Any thought?
Thanks,
I just uninstalled the addon, downloaded the ‘latest’, tried to reinstall, and it refuses to install w/ the message: “Google Calendar Tab 2.0 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Shredder 3.0.2pre”
Is there any way I can hack the code to force it to install?
I’ve really grown used to having this addon, and I hate to go back to not having it.
Thanks,
I used what @Colin said about editing the install.rdf file and repackaging and that totally fixed my problem.
Thanks @Colin!
I repackaged the Google Calendar tabs and many other addons to be compatible with any version 3.0.x.
http://electronsoftware.altervista.org/extensions/
Hey, I finally added the Google Apps support via a preferences option. I also added this to the addons.mozilla.org site so you’ll get automatic updates instead of checking back every time.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/70768/
Thanks, and let me know how it goes.
Cool. Thank you. Much simpler than Lightning with Sunbird with the Provider for Google Calendar, that seemed to make Thunderbird 2.00 crash and is currently not production ready for 3.0. Now I have a reason for the 3.0 tabs, since I had to disable the indexing to stop the constant use of resources along with the creation of a 2+ GB all mail file.
It did take a couple of minutes to figure out how to make it work. I kept clicking on Google Calendar tab in the Tools tab and nothing happened.
Yeah, I tried the Calendar Tab xpi file from addons.mozilla.org and after I installed it nothing happened when I tried to open it in a tab. The one from electronsoftware site works though.
I also tried the new addon, using it with a site that isn’t google. In my case I tried hotmail. A couple of issues:
1. the icon is still google’s (I know, this is only for google local domain, but still)
2. When I open the tab, hotmail shows up fine. However every link is opened in the browser, not in the TB tab. This doesn’t occur with the old modified addons (available on electronsoftware).
OK, so I installed it and clicked on both the Tools menu item and the little tab bar button. A big fat nothing! Great first impression.
Where are your troubleshooting procedures?
I would love a tab for Google Reader if you have time.
I uploaded a new version; 3.1 which should fix those issues you saw with that first version. Hopefully the add-on submission process will be done soon so it’s out of the experimental status.
@NickF now that this new add-on lets you specify a URL for Google Apps you can actually put any URL in there that you want. However the icon will stay the same calendar one and the name won’t change. This wasn’t really built to be a general purpose URL opener; that’s for a different add-on.
@Ray there was a problem with the default preferences which is why others could get it to work if they changed the value in the Add-on prefs page. There isn’t a framework for automated testing of add-ons so this is the only troubleshooting I have.
@Jesse electronsoftware / NickF has a number of other add-ons for other sites you might want to try. Though I haven’t checked them out myself.
Jesse,
I added an addon for Google Reader:
http://electronsoftware.altervista.org/extensions/
Nicely done. Thank you!
Version 3.1 fixed my problems. Thanks!!!
Hey Bryan – great add-on. Just curious what it would take and/or if you’d be interested in porting this to Postbox.
Thanks!
@Bryan,
Great Job with adding support for Google Apps! Thank You!
very happy with the google apps add on…thanks! now I can use Thunderbird and Google Apps Calendar which both sync with my crackberry!
I noticed I cannot delete an event, or do a search within the calendar tab.
This is a great addition!
I’d like to echo a previous question — is there a way to accept Outlook invitations directly without the hassle of forwarding to the gmail account, then adding it, and clicking accept?
Also, as another very recent post pointed out, I can select an event and click “Delete” but the event doesn’t delete. I need to edit the event details and click Delete to make it go away…
Any answers to either of these issues?
Thanks!
jm
Hey guys,
When I’m trying to login it says I have to enable Cookies in my browser, even though it’s on \Sites I trust\… Even when I change it to Allow All cookies it gives the same text/ error! My default browser is Safari.
Can anyone help me out here? I’d like to give this add-on a chance…
grtz,
RJ
Hi, I tried this addon, but I keep getting this message “Your browser’s cookie functionality is turned off. Please turn it on. [?]” I followed the message and change cookie setting in firefox 3.6, but I still keep getting the same message again and again!!!
Does anyone have this problem? If so, how did you handle this? any tips will be highly appreciated!!
thanks
BP
Hey there again,
I found out the reason why it wasn’t working with the cookies.
You have to enable cookies in Thunderbird too.
You should get there through:
>Extra >Options >Security >(subtab) Webfiles (last one)
> Then thick the box “Accept cookies from websites”
Done…
Ps: I have a different language pack in firebird so I hope this where the good tabnames.
Thanks RJ, it works perfectly!! Loving it!!
Hi,
Can anyone please give me some instructions on how to install the data from NickF’s site in Thunderbird 3.04pre? When I click on the links I get a new page with what look like code on it. How do I go about converting this to use on my 64 bit Thunderbird.
Big thanks,
Nutha Nick
@Nutha Nick,
About the page display, you may want to try clearing T-bird’s cache: Tools > Options > Advanced > Network & Disk Space > Disk Space > Clear Now.
Nicknefarious,
Right click on the link and save the file on your computer. In thunderbird, from the menu “tools”, select “Add-ons”. In the panel that opens, push the button “install” and select the file you saved on your computer. Follow the instructions. Enjoy.
Thanks for your help guys. for some reason lat night every time I clicked on the links, either left or right click, I ended up with a page of code which wasn’t working. This morning the links are downloading as.xpi file normally and everything is working fine.
Anything new on the Calendar Tasks problem (not showing up)?
How can I build the extension to include Google Notebook?
Cool extensions, great job so far. Keep it up.
Nutha Nick
Great addon!
I’ve seen problems similar to what others have mentioned, specifically:
* Cannot click settings in calendar tab
* Cannot search calendar
I’ve moved on to using the lightning plugin for thunderbird… which works great for displaying. It has a problem with dismissing reminders though – it always complains because the google calendar site dismisses it (or another thunderbird client if you use one at home and work), so when you go to dismiss it from thunderbird it just gives an error saying it couldn’t update.
Anyway, its an option
Everytime I reopen TB the Google Calendar tab is still open, but I have to login again. Is there a way to automate this?
I tried installing “Secure Login” (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4429) which would solve the problem, but it’s not compatible with TB 3.0.3
This is really a great addon, thank you very much!
I have no problem logging in and modifying events, but I have the same problems that Josh B pointed out:
* Cannot click settings in calendar tab
* Cannot search calendar
If I can provide usefull informations to fix it, please contact me.