Make Ubiquity Work In Thunderbird

Project Name

Make Ubiquity work in Thunderbird.

Project Description

Ubiquity is a cool extensible natural language front-end to Firefox. It could do wonders in Thunderbird as well. Aza Raskin and other Ubiquity hackers are happy to help someone do that with their Ubiquity knowledge, and #maildev will be happy to assist w/ Thunderbird knowledge.

Project Leader(s)

Scott Lunel
Thomas Brown

Releases

0.1 Release:

NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE OFFICIAL UBIQUITY IN THUNDERBIRD RELEASE. 0.1 IS JUST A NUMBER FOR MY INSTRUCTOR TO SEE SO HE KNOWS WHICH ASSIGNMENT THIS IS FOR!

With that said, this release will only work in Thunderbird 3.0 or higher. You can get that here:

Thunderbird Latest Trunk

You can get the 0.1 release of Ubiquity to Thunderbird here:
(DEFAULT KEYBINDING TO OPEN UBIQUITY IN THUNDERBIRD IS 'ALT+D')

IMPORTANT: If Ubiquity downloads with 'Image_' as the prefix of the file name, rename the file and remove it. Otherwise it will NOT work.
Ubiquity In Thunderbird

NOTE: I didn't get any help testing this file. It runs fine on my machine. If it bugs out on you please let me know so I can fix it. I ran this using the trunk build of Thunderbird above and Microsoft Windows XP with SP3.

Contribution Opportunities

- We currently need testers to help test Ubiquity in Thunderbird. Things you NEED:

1. Know how to make a simple text file and copy it into your Thunderbird extensions directory.
2. The latest Thunderbird Trunk: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-trunk/

Get a hold of me (Scott) on irc.mozilla.org under the alias slunel. I hang out in #seneca, and #ubiquity. Ask me any questions you may have. I'm totally willing to help everyone get started helping me test the Ubiquity/TB extension.

Project Contributor(s)

- Chris Bishop
For being patient and helpful enough to aid Scott in his quest to compile Firefox and Thunderbird for the first time.
- Jason Tarka
Helping Scott find the location of Ubiquity extensions.
- Chinmay Patel
, Tested the 0.1 XPI of Ubiquity to see if it works. It does!
- James Evangelista
Submitted an idea for a Ubiquity-Thunderbird command to mark e-mails as read.

Meetings

• Mozilla Developer Days
• Conference Call 1

Project Details

Potential 0.2 Release:

- Ubiquity shows up in both Firefox and Thunderbird. (done)
- Documentation of changes made to get the above working. (currently working on)
- Create object inheritance to control function calls depending on active environment (ie: Firefox or Thunderbird)? (Maybe but not likely at this point... probably 0.3)

0.1 Release:

- Open Ubiquity in Thunderbird 3.0 or greater using the 'ALT+D' key binding.
- Ubiquity window, command preview blocks working. Map preview block still not functioning properly
- Many commands are still broken.
- Commands that require Firefox tabs now pop up Thunderbird windows. (ie: command-editor, command-list, help, etc)
- Thunderbird windows only currently support external URLs if you select the default application on click to Firefox.

Project News

11/05/08

Author: Scott Lunel

- Got our build of Ubiquity working in both Firefox and Thunderbird in the same XPI file. There's still some kinks to work out, and I'm doing my best to resolve those. Going to take some time to get everything working as it should be. However, for now, yes... it DOES work in both environments :)

11/04/08

Author: Scott Lunel

- Been a while since I've updated the page. Current plan at the moment is to get the Thunderbird version of Ubiquity to work in Firefox again. That way we have a single extension that can work in both environments rather than two separate extensions. My current plan is to work on getting our Ubiquity to pop up in Firefox again (it's currently broken there). From what I understand, Thomas is handling the meta data to help Ubiquity functions determine whether or not they're capable of running in Firefox, Thunderbird, or both.

10/17/08

Author: Scott Lunel

- 0.1 of Ubiquity in Thunderbird has been released!

10/08/08

Author: Scott Lunel

- Ubiquity is now popping up in Thunderbird! Sadly commands aren't working properly yet. That's on my next "TODO" list.

10/02/08

Author: Scott Lunel

- Just a quick update on what's going on. Jono, a Mozilla Developer, has taken charge of the project and we're currently working with a larger member base. Our group has been given two tasks. We were told to create our own Thunderbird extension and read the Ubiquity source code to get a complete understanding of the entire project.

- Well, I've managed to accomplish these two things. At this point I feel that the project is heading in a good direction. From what I've seen so far, this is going to be a massive project with many directions to head once Ubiquity is indeed ported over. It's nice to have a group willing to give their all into making this work.

- At this point in time I've managed to get Ubiquity to load into Thunderbird. Not an overly challenging task, but it's showing up in Thunderbird's addons. A simple editing of its overlay and manifest files did the trick. I'm currently working on getting Ubiquity to pop up in Thunderbird, but I've run into a "road block".

- I'll have more news once I make some progress past getting Ubiquity to load in Add-Ons.

09/25/08

Author: Scott Lunel

- Alright not sure where to begin here. I've managed to get Mercurial updating my Firefox and Thunderbird source with little to no problem now. This means I can actually start searching through Firefox and Thunderbird code to determine how exactly Thomas and I are going to go about porting Ubiquity over to Thunderbird.

09/17/08

Author: Scott Lunel

- Created the "Making Ubiquity Work With Thunderbird" page.

Known Ubiquity Bugs

Ubiquity: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=453037
DOM Core affecting Ubiquity: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452568
IE Tab Preventing Ubiquity From Regaining "Focus": https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=452537