About

gContactSync 0.2 takes advantage of Google’s updated and improved API for obtaining and modifying contacts.  Duplicates are allowed which, combined with a rewrite of the synchronization code, provides a significantly faster synchronization process.  The longest delay now seems to be receiving the contacts from Google.  There may be some room for improvement there, but I do not want to make too many changes yet until I make sure that the ones I made did not introduce any bugs.

The new API exposes the system groups, which include  My Contacts, Family, Friends, and Coworkers.  All contacts from the account, including Suggested Contacts are in the synchronized address book.  There is a mailing list for each of the pre-defined system groups and each custom group.

You can download it here, but I rewrote the most important code and there may be bugs I haven’t found in it yet.  I would only advise those who have hundreds or thousands of contacts and receive the “Unresponsive Script” warning to try it.  Please read the upgrade instructions below.

NOTE: Google allows contacts without e-mail addresses, but Thunderbird will break if a contact without an e-mail address is manually added to a mailing list as explained in Bug 20153.  If you encounter that bug in 0.1.x please let me know because it is somewhat difficult to fix and all attempts to synchronize after it breaks will fail.  To avoid this, 0.2 adds an email address “nobody@nowhere.invalid” to any contact without one.  However, only unique e-mail addresses are allowed in mailing lists, so only one contact with an empty e-mail address is allowed per group/mailing list is allowed until o.2.0b1.  The other contacts will appear in the address book only.

Current Features

  • All the features of 0.1
  • Duplicates (multiple contacts with the same e-mail address) are allowed
  • Much faster synchronization
  • Only US English (en-US) until I finish adding features and strings
  • Customization of how addresses are synchronized
  • Default groups are enabled (Family, Friends, Coworkers) as mailing lists in Thunderbird

Requirements

  • Thunderbird 2.0 or Thunderbird 3.0 (a1pre through the trunk build b3pre) or Seamonkey 2.0 only (not 1.1.x)
  • A Google account or Google-hosted account
  • An Internet connection faster than dialup (DSL, cable, satellite, etc)

Planned Features

  • More locales
  • Maybe addons.mozilla.org?
  • Let me know what else you would like, but I can’t promise anything

Upgrade instructions to 0.2.0

  • In the address book, synchronize contacts one last time.
  • Rename the synchronized address book(s), this is just so you have a backup of your contacts.
  • In the main window, go to Tools -> Add-ons -> gContactSync -> Options/Preferences
  • In the Accounts tab, select one account at a time in remove them.
  • Install the new version and restart Thunderbird.  There is no need to remove the previous version first.
  • Open the Address Book window and fill in the information for your first account.

Bugfixes/enhancements from 0.1.x

  • Bug 20527 – Avoid HTTP Request errors when the Address Book window is closed
  • Bug 20509 – Add Seamonkey support
  • Bug 20508 – Consider adding overlay.css to customizeToolbar.xul
  • Bug 20487 – Add shortcut to preferences in the Address Book
  • Bug 20486 – Improve Address Preferences
  • Bug 20352 – Update gContactSync to use Contacts Data API 2
  • Bug 20148 – Default groups dont appear in Thunderbird
  • Bug 19786 – Support for Google’s ‘Most Contacted’ & ‘Suggested Contacts’

Known Bugs:

  • Bug 20153 – Partial fix only – Groups containing contacts without email addresses break in Thunderbird

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