Bryan Clark » google calendar

Try other web apps in Thunderbird tabs

Bryan Clark — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:30:50 +0000

Colin Dean converted the code from my post on Google Calendar in Thunderbird tabs and created a GMail tab for Thunderbird.

If you’re interested in trying what a web application would look like running inside a Thunderbird tab without modifying an extension use the following code snippet.

Open the Error Console from the Tools Menu

Copy & Paste this code into the input entry at the top:

Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1']
          .getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator)
          .getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane")
          .document.getElementById("tabmail")
          .openTab("contentTab",{contentPage:"http://tinyvid.tv/show/2h9led44g152z"})

update: here’s a text input which you can easily copy and paste the above code from.

Change the provided link ( http://tinyvid.tv/show/2h9led44g152z ) at the end to the web application you’d like to try, like http://twitter.com for example. Click the ( Evaluate ) button.

It’s Party Time! ( if you didn’t change the link, http://tinyvid.tv/show/2h9led44g152z )

You can continue to iterate the tab application by creating a new click handler, however at that point it might be worthwhile to start with the extension code instead of working in the error console.

Jetpack for Thunderbird

In the hopefully not too distant future Thunderbird will gain Jetpack as it’s new extension model and it will be no longer necessary for add-ons like this these be created but instead a simple Jetpack which can do the same things without restarts or complicated installs.

If you’re interested in this take a look at Andrew’s recent Jetpack in Thunderbird post.

Above code snippet courtesy of Magnus in

Google Calendar in Thunderbird tabs

Bryan Clark — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:49:43 +0000

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:

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.

Lightning Nightly Builds

Bryan Clark — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:39:47 +0000

Since I started using the Thunderbird nightly builds I haven’t been using the Lightning plugin because the add-on version didn’t keep up with the latest build versions of Thunderbird. Luckily this morning I woke up from this reality when I found the Lightning Nightly Updater which fixes that problem.

After installing I changed it’s options to also install the gdata provider for Google Calendar, then I ran the Check for Updates menu item from the Help menu and calendaring is back.

Update: Just to note that the nightly updater should grab the proper version even if you’re running a thunderbird branch instead of trunk.