Firefox Extension: Delegate RTM

Here's a new Firefox extension—well, ok, maybe "repurposed" would be a better description—that adds an "Add to RTM" (that's Remember the Milk, the brilliant online task list service if you don't know) link to any message in gmail. You can see the link in the screenshot right next to this extension's big brother, DelegateGCal.


[Update: You can see what an extension newb (rhymes with boob) I am by not even knowing how to post it right! For now if you want to try this out, looks like you will have to right click and "save as" if you want to download it.]


[Update #2: Here is the extension on the official mozilla addons page (login required to access the "sandbox" area). If you download the extension, please add a review on the mozilla page so that I eventually can make this publicly accessible. -Thanks]

[Update #3 (last one I hope!): This extension is now available for public consumption on the official mozilla addons page. Enjoy!]

Clicking on the "Add to RTM" opens up a new gmail message window, prefilled with all of your RTM preferences and most importantly a link back to the message itself.

Credit to ano.malo.us for the original implementation that this extension is blatantly ripped off from based on.

I welcome anyone to take this and run with it, modify it, hack it, or whatever else you can think of. My skills are a bit lacking in this area, but I'm sure that someone reading this will be able to improve upon my rough work. Off the top of my head, I'd love to see this working using the a slick popup widget; the original extension that this is based on uses a GreyBox popup window, but I couldn't get the Gmail compose window to be happy in one. Or maybe even better, what if clicking the "Add to RTM" button simply forwarded the message using the gmail forward functionality (no popup needed!)? I tried off and on for a week and just didn't have the javascript chops to get that worked out. If somebody else can, you will be my hero.

I learned a ton on this mini-project about firefox extension building and javascript, two new areas of development for me. Seems to me there are a lot of "head scratchers" in both!

I'd love to hear about what you make from this, so speak up!

Kick Off

This is just a quick note about the launch of this blog. I'm not sure how much content will be published here, but after landing on other blogs during my code searches—and finding many worthwhile technical hints—I decided I should give back to the community.

I doubt many of the public at large will be regular readers, but if you are like me, you ended up here from some technical google search. Or you're interested in a project that I've put out. Either way, feel free to steal whatever you see here and if you have questions or suggestions then fire away!