Thunderbird Picture Preview

Introduction

A Thunderbird extension that does a slideshow of all the image attachments in the email. Currently planned to replace the inline attachments display to something similar to the Web 2.0 image boxes.

Project Description

Write an extension for Thunderbird that allows the user to start a slideshow preview of all images in the current message. The feature would work like this: when a mail arrives with pictures attached, a button or some other UI is added to the message that allows the slideshow to begin. When clicked, the images are shown one after the other, properly scaled to fit in the window. Consider using Canvas to do the custom graphics, and take a look at this existing Thunderbird extension for ideas.

References: #maildev, jminta, dmose

Project Leader(s)

1. Joseph Cresencia (Leader)

Project Contributor(s)

None yet. Become a contributor!

How to contribute!

1. Make more transitions
2. Documentation
3. Make suggestions for future release
4. Report any bugs

Project Details

The project is an extension to Mozilla Thunderbird. The name of the extension is now called "Slideshow Gallery" as "Picture Preview" sounds like it is like the tab preview extension to Firefox.

This extension is to make the similar Web 2.0 picture slideshows you see in various websites on the internet. It replaces the inline picture attachment with the slideshow. This only applied to on-screen display. Printing of the email is not effected.

Currently has one transition which is the common fade in/fade out.

Project News

1. v0.3 - http://blog.zero-type.com/osd/2008/04/17/road-to-code-v03/
2. v0.2 - http://blog.zero-type.com/osd/2008/03/23/road-to-code-v02/
3. v0.1 - http://blog.zero-type.com/osd/2008/02/29/the-road-to-code-v01/

Feel free to read the blog and see the progression of the extension.

Future Plans

This project was done for OSD600. I have no plans to take the continuing course (OSD700) as I am graduating.

If you will take over the project or contribute to the project by all means, send me an email.

Plans to continue the extension to the v1.0 release is planned.

Here are what changes are to made

1. Restructure the code to JSON
2. Add more transitions
3. Make it more extensible like the choice of colours and layout
4. Switch to the Canvas element

Bugzilla

Currently found no bugs on bugzilla that specifically relates to my project. The following are the closest I can find that may help my project.

1. Bug 370792 – Improvements to the new attachment UI - I will need to add a button or some sort to start the slideshow. The attachments are displayed in the pane below the message.
2. Bug 218999 – Thunderbird should use a tabbed interface - Currently TB doesn't use tabs. But one idea I got was maybe put the slideshow in a new tab to switch between attachment and the slideshow
3. Bug 44135 – Allow preview of attachments in mail compose window - This is similar to the project. As you attach pictures in the compose window, to display a preview of the pictures.
4. Bug 321325 – attachment panel taller than needed - Talks about the attachment pane. Might be helpful. Wondering how they got it to display in list view though.
5. Bug 244459 – Drag and drop ical (.ics) attachments from mail onto calendar - A link jminta posted on my blog that would be helpful