mossop / webapptabs

WebApp tabs for Thunderbird

WebApp Tabs

This is an extension for Thunderbird which allows you to view webapps in Thunderbird's tabs.

Project Goals

There are many extensions for viewing webpages in Thunderbird. This isn't what I think Thunderbird is for, webpages can be viewed in Firefox or whatever browser you prefer. Thunderbird is my communications centre and I use it to display communications related webapps like Google+, Google Reader, Google Groups, etc. and I want to be able to use those easily, opening links in the default browser where relevant.

The main goals are:

• Allow the user to configure a set of available webapps
• Provide a way for the user to open each webapp in a tab
• Any attempt to open a configured webapp (e.g. from a link in an email or anywhere else) should open it in the existing tab for the webapp if one exists or a new tab for the webapp in Thunderbird
• Any links clicked in the webapp that are to other sites should open in the default browser
• The webapp should behave as well in Thunderbird as it would if opened in Firefox

Testing

All fixes should include appropriate automated testing. In order to run the unit tests the mozbase submodule must first be pulled with git submodule init and git submodule update. Then running python runtests.py should run the tests and output any failures.

Building

To build an XPI that can be installed into Thunderbird just run the build.sh command and it will output webapptabs.xpi into the current directory. This will update any existing file without warning.

Contributing

As always feel free to fork. This project is MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-licensed. The issues list contains all the things I know I want to fix, if you have other ideas then let's talk.

webapptabs's Issues

Spell checking doesn't work for GMail's subject field

Add support for Google's desktop notifications

Save prefs after closing the config UI

Currently if Thunderbird crashes we lose any pref saves, make sure to save them to disk after the config UI closes

Focus the existing tab when clicking a webapp that is already open

If a webapp is already open in the current window clicking the button again should just focus that tab.

Handle webapps trying to open new tabs properly

Currently it is fairly easy to get a blank tab when clicking on a link in a webapp, this is likely from javascript calls.

Close all open webapps when the extension is disabled

Allow JS to run in webapps even if disabled for the rest of Thunderbird

Some people run with JS disabled to avoid mail messages from being able to do something nasty but that breaks many webapps so it'd be nice to be able to, optionally, forcibly enable JS for those.

WebApp Tabs doesn't work in Thunderbird 11 (nightly)

Thunderbird updated to version 11 (nightly) and it looks like I don't see web apps on the tab bar which I saw. Not sure what it is a cause, maybe it is not related to the TB 11. In Error Console I see:

Warning: OverlayManager: Exception loading script chrome://webapptabs/content/webtab.js: redeclaration of var Cc
Source: chrome://webapptabs/content/webtab.js
Line: 44

Nothing more.

In option dialog there are my apps.

Zoom settings aren't remembered across reloads

Allow leaving webapps open

When disabling the extension or removing webapps we shouldn't close existing tabs. When re-enabling the existing tabs should be used when trying to use a webapp again

Links from Gtalk in Google+ open in a new tab in Thunderbird

openURI is seeing the inner frame URL opening the link, which isn't the right domain to be the Google+ webapp so it is assumed to be a load we don't care about intercepting. Should walk up to the outer frame if possible.

webtab: onBeforeLinkTraversal http://www.gamepolitics.com/2012/01/03/belarus-declares-foreign-web-site-surfing-illegal targetted at '_blank': new target '_blank' - Inner frame load

webtab: openURI from https://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/mole?id=gtn0056532837113244641&prop=homepage&authuser=0&hl=en-GB&type=m#id=gtn0056532837113244641 - Opener is not a webapp, continuing as normal

Add a back button to the context menu

Sometimes a webapp will attempt to load something that isn't part of the webapp. Until we can detect that we need to provide a way to go back. An example is clicking View as Text on a Gmail attachment, it loads a plain text document in the current tab (because it is still a gmail url).

Maybe we should still respect targets and open a new window in this case?

webapp is null on startup

STR:
0. get an addon with about: page (e.g. about:startup, about:telemetry, Nightly Tester Tools 3.4pre)
2. open it's about url (or simply open about:support from the Help menu)
3. open about:addons
4. arrange tabs to let about:addons be closer to the left
5. restart Application
6. see below:

    Error: webapp is null
    Source: chrome://webapptabs/content/webtab.js
    Line: 623

WebAppTabs is 3.0a1.

Back/Forward context menus are broken in Thunderbird 10

Favicon updating doesn't work

When a webpage updates its own favicon (i.e. Google's unread indicator) it doesn't update on the tab.

Webapp buttons don't appear on startup

When enabling the extension at runtime they work but not at startup

Add a debug pref that controls whether we flush the cache on shutdown

Calls to window.open will open a new tab in Thunderbird

Javascript protocol links inside frames do nothing

Similar to issue #19 but only for inner frames

Javascript protocol links do nothing

If an anchor has its href set to a javascript: url it seems to not get executed when clicked

After a restart tooltips don't work in webapp tabs

Because we lose the tooltip attribute on restore no doubt. Might be able to use the session restore stuff here or just iterate all the tabs and check if they are webapps

Write automated tests

Support notifications for badging the dock icon

From webapps like reader, gmail etc. it would be awesome to get the unread count and badge the tab/dock somehow.

Google task

Hi, I'm trying to add google task in WebAppTabs but the following link does not work inside the plugin.

https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig

Is there any way to get google Task inside the plugin?

thank you

Add tests for spellchecking

Add tests for opening external links

Mighty Text webapp

Hey,
Thanks for the grate add-on!

https://mightytext.net/app/ is an app that syncs with android phone contacts and sms to allow send and receive of sms though the webapp. For it to work you need to the phone app too:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.texty.sms#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDIxMiwiY29tLnRleHR5LnNtcyJd
website:
http://mightytext.net/

When I tried it in WebAppTabs it does not open in TB but auto sent to firefox while leaving a blank page that says "Logging in to MightyText with your Google account . . ".

Is there a way to make this work?
Thanks!

Support spellchecking inside text boxes

Just like in Firefox we should have spellchecking support in textboxes

Google tasks doesn't work properly in Calendar tab

Selecting the "Tasks" calendar in Google Calendar opens up a sidebar that should allows users to manage Google tasks. No Thunderbird web tab add-on I've found has been able to get that feature to work. I tried WebApp Tabs hoping that it might work, but still the same symptoms: the frame opens on the side with a Tasks heading, but there is zero functionality. It is difficult to express how much joy it would bring me (and many others) if someone were able to get that to work!

Fix about:blank errors from OverlayManager

When opening a window it seems that the OverlayManager is seeing unloads for about:blank. This might be because we add the listener before the load event fires on the window.

Sites with large favicons display badly

Some sites (http://everytimezone.com f.e.) have larger than the normal 16x16 favicons and they currently display badly. Should restrict them to 16x16.

Page event handlers for links are never called

Because we cancel the event as soon as we see a href to load the page has no change to execute event handlers. We'd need to find somewhere else to intercept the load to fix this

Add tests for the preferences UI

Might be changing the UI here, maybe hold-off till then

Add tooltip support

How else can you properly view xkcd?!?

Links from Twitter open in a new tab in Thunderbird

Add tooltips to the webapp buttons

Support configuring the list of webapps

Localize preferences UI

For some reason referencing a DTD is failing from the prefs UI right now so all the strings are hardcoded

Add tests for back/forward context menu items

Allow reordering webapps

The prefs UI should allow drag and drop reordering of the webapps, the buttons should update to match

Links from mail messages should be opened in the appropriate webapp tab

When clicking a link in a mail message that is to the same host as a webapp we should open the webapp in a tab or switch to it if it already exists.

Automatically update webapp icons from the page favicon

When the page loads and sets its favicon we should use that for the webapp. Maybe only for the first load.

Connecting to local files

I cannot for the life of me get this to connect to a local file. I'm using TB portable and have a few Tiddlywiki pages I'm using as a knowledgebase and project tracking. I have them on the portable HD with TB but cannot get relative paths to work with this extension.

Maybe you could setup a path to use for internal/chrome locations or something. Be cause you love me.

Allow turning on the spellchecker for fields that have it switched off

The top bar at Google looks different in Thunderbird to Firefox

The Google+ notifications section and profile button are missing, maybe a cookie or plugins thing, don't really know yet,

Problem with Yahoo Mail (browser unsupported)

The new Yahoo Mail recognizes WebAppTab not as a supported Browser although Firefox is supported!

The old Yahoo Mail interface works fine.

Close the config UI when disabling the extension

Need to support multiple urls for a single webapp

Some webapps redirect to new urls temporarily, gmail f.e. redirects you to accounts.google.com when your login expires and right now that causes it to open in Firefox which is no use.

We'll need to have multiple URLs (regexes?) for each webapp, a "main" as the first to open and secondarys to allow loading them. Maybe some built in default for "googleish" sites and others that we are aware of.

Make logging configurable

Currently we're spewing a lot of log messages that are really only for debugging purposes. At the least the LOG messages should default to hidden.

After installation we don't switch to existing webapps until after restarting Thunderbird

From email:

"Thanks for great add-on! Maybe one suggestion. What about “switch to tab” when application is opened and user wants to open such application’s tab again?"

Your answer was:
"It should do that already, does it not for you?"

Yes, it looks like it didn't work for me as expected. But it looks like I fixed it. It doesn't work as expected after instalation but after Thunderbird restart it works.