Blog, Simple Gmail Notes, Tech

Blog, Simple Gmail Notes, Tech

I wrote the first version of Firefox extension of Simple Gmail Notes about one and half year ago, and now I am forced to develop a new one using WebExtension technology, because the old jpm addons would be fully disabled after Firefox 57.

That was quite a surprise, because when I started to develop the extension back then, jpm was the most recommended technology for Firefox addon development. And I suffered so much during the development.

Anyway, now the the extension already got some problems with new Firefox (FF 50+), especially with the OAuth. So I am left no choice except starting on this ASAP.

Blog, Simple Gmail Notes, Tech

One week after the Chrome extension of simple gmail notes was released, I started to plan on porting of extension to Firefox.

There are 2 major incentives for this porting:

1. I spent quite a lot of effort to work out the google API for the extension. Most of them are just RESTful HTTP API, which are supposed to work with Firefox extension right alway.
2. During the implementation of Google extension, I tried to get way from most Chrome specific API (e.g. chrome sync). So theoretically most code should work with Firefox extension.

Blog, Simple Gmail Notes, Tech

For a long time, I wanted a browser extension that allows me simply add notes to the Gmail. It is because I need some easy way to mark down the comments on the resumes of candidates, Sometimes they would send the resumes across a long time span. Of course I could mark down the notes on evernote, but it’s time-consuming and difficult to have an organized list of comments overall candidates, most of which I would not review for the second time.

There was a useful plugin called Notes-For-Gmail. Yet it stopped functioning months ago, and I have no way to contact the author.

Finally I decided my own one, as I really need this. And it seems to be a good chance to learn the Google chrome extension writing as well.