My Recent Lack of Activity

I apologize for my recent lack of activity both on gContactSync and Thunderbird.  I have not vanished from the Open Source scene.  The past month was tough (very busy and not fun) due to some strange medical issues that eventually forced me to go to the hospital.  During that time I had to devote my energy to catching/keeping up with homework, papers, and projects for college as well as my part-time job to help pay for college.

I’m doing well now, and will hopefully find some time to work on gContactSync and a few Thunderbird bugs (like an extended XBL datepicker for the Birthday and (not yet created) Anniversary fields) between homework, finding an apartment, and visiting relatives and friends over my one week off for Thanksgiving break (I also have several computers to fix, remove malware from, and setup for relatives).  I accepted a co-op position (not related to Mozilla) from January until August 2009, so I may have more spare time to work on my extension and Thunderbird.

My first goal is to catch up on bugs, e-mail, etc.  I apologize again for my recent unresponsiveness and inactivity.

Status update

• Thunderbird
  • Bug 456024 – Turn the adapted birthday datepicker into an inherited/extended xbl widget – I’ve had a basic patch for some time now that introduces an extended XBL datepicker widget that allows for blank values for the month and year (with M/D empty text) and removes the year portion of the datepicker
  • Bug 456220 – Birthday and month shown in card view aren’t localized well – I just need to have some input on how to solve this.  Using the system settings is fine if the year is present, but if not there are two main choices that I see:
    
    • Just as the system describes (MM/DD/YYYY for me in US English on Linux, Day Name, Month Name D, YYYY in Windows in US English), but with the YYYY, separator, and  day name & separator removed (if present)
      
    • Look at how the system does it (find the month/day relative order and the separator between them) and print the month name and day in the detected order with the separator.  However, in Linux this would be inconsistent with the MM/DD/YYYY that I get.
  • Bug 456026 – Add day/month order indications to the birthday field on address book contacts – The datepicker bug should fix this
  • Bug 458591 – Consider improving the labels on the Birthday Field – I just need some recommendations on how to improve them.  There is an outdated image of the new datepicker here (the card dialog was since changed).  Localizer feedback would be awesome since I only know English and some Spanish.
  • Bug 456025 – Implement an anniversary field in the address book – Waiting on the datepicker
• gContactSync
  • Considering new name (gContacts as it originally was).  Any ideas are welcome
  • Working on replying to recent feedback over e-mail, the mailing list, and blog comments
    
  • Contrary to what some believe, the gContactSync “team” consists of one busy undergraduate Computer Engineering major only as a volunteer project (started as a paid Google Summer of Code 2008 project)
  • Anyone who wants to help program, fix bugs, or add features is welcome to do so (shoot me an e-mail).  The code has a lot of comments in it.
  • Checking out the poll results from my last post and deciding on what to do after fixing some bugs
    
  • Bugs
    • 20188 Card Dialog overlay is broken on trunk builds – Trying to figure out the best way to have two totally different overlays
    • 20169 Extra attributes should be disabled for read-only cards – The textboxes and types added are not disabled for read-only cards (like cards found through LDAP)
    • 20153 Groups containing contacts without email addresses break in Thunderbird – Have not figured out the best way to start this yet