The second and final 0.1 beta version of gContactSync is now available for download. This beta will probably not last as long as 0.1b1 did and there probably won’t be any significant new features before the first release. If you would like me to add a new feature, help translate, or report a bug, please see this or e-mail me.
Tutorial (not changed much)
Thank you to Mozdev for hosting the project and everybody who gave feedback and/or reported a bug!
Upgrading
It should upgrade cleanly from 0.1b1, so just download it from the link above and install it like normal. If you have contacts with multiple screennames, you should rename or delete the synchronized address book first.
New Features
- E-mail Address types and Screenname protocols are now synchronized. Instead of synchronizing the first screenname of each protocol, it now syncs the first 6 screennames and their protocols.
- Bug 19743 – Add a preference to disable Mailing List/Group synchronization
- Bug 19753 – (Fixed in Thunderbird 3.0b1pre and after only) Unable to set gContactSync specific settings when creating a new contact card
Bug Fixes
It comes with several bug fixes:
- Bug 19732 (and 19739) – Title, Organization values exchanged in gcontactsync 0.1b1
- Bug 19733 – Dragging a card to a mail list in the same directory makes the card appear twice
- Bug 19740 – GContact.encodeString and GContact.decodeString are unnecessary
- Bug 19750 – Extra columns for the address book results pane don’t work prior to Mailnews bug 413260
6 Comments
carl · August 14, 2008 at 12:56 PM
Great to see things evolve. One question: Today I’m syncing contacts from my sony ericsson mobile phone to thunderbird via MyPhoneExplorer (freeware, available from http://www.fjsoft.at/en/ ). Concidering the added contact attributes in gContactSync, will this break my mobile syncing?
I’m really hoping to sync the mobile, thunderbird and gmail contacts, that would be perfect!
Michael S. · August 14, 2008 at 4:14 PM
I like it so far. It would be nice to have a drop down for the phone numbers to select phone number type similar to what you’ve implemented for screen names and email addresses. So far, out of the extensions I’ve looked at for syncing Thunderbird / Google contacts, yours is by far the best, even in beta. Looking forward to seeing what the future holds for this extension.
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Michael S.
pi · August 14, 2008 at 6:43 PM
@carl I looked at the Thunderbird extension that comes with MyPhoneExplorer and in theory it should work with everything except postal addresses. Basically, Google has one field for addresses and Thunderbird has 6, so I take the contents of Thunderbird’s address fields and fill the new multi-lined field and them remove the old address. I’m adding a pref that allows you to not remove the old address for the next release. If you plan on syncing the same address book with MyPhoneExplorer and gContactSync you might want to wait until the next release, backup everything, and then uncheck the pref to remove the old address.
@Michael S, thanks for the feedback. For the phone number type, would you then like to see the existing labels (Home, Work, Mobile, Pager, and Fax) removed and replaced with drop down menus like Google? Then the first 7 or so phone numbers of any type would be synchronized.
Michael S. · August 15, 2008 at 10:42 AM
That’s kind of what I was thinking. It’s not often that I have more than 6 phone numbers for one contact, but I might have several work numbers(e.g., my wife has three work numbers listed, her direct line, her department, and the organization’s main line). For my uses it would be more helpful to sync the first n phone numbers regardless of type instead of the first 1 of each type. That’s my opinion, for what it’s worth.
pi · August 21, 2008 at 11:28 PM
There is now a bug for the feature request since I agree that it would be useful – https://www.mozdev.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=19800
If all goes well, this will appear in the next release. Thanks!
Michael S. · August 25, 2008 at 11:13 PM
That’s great. I’m looking forward to the next release.