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Notary for Thunderbird 2.x
By RickMeasham | November 25, 2007
I needed the functionality provided by Notary, David Cooper’s Thunderbird extension for adding notes to an email. However it wasn’t compatible with Thunderbird 2.x and despite requests to the Mozilla extensions directory no update was forthcoming.
Therefore, I’ve taken it upon myself to ‘hack’ compatibility and offer the hacked file to anyone who wants it. The extension doesn’t come with any license information therefore I must assume it is closed source, and therefore this is not any sort of official release to the point where it may be breaching Mr Cooper’s copyright to post it. Should I ever hear from him anywhere, I’ll be sure to clarify the licensing!
You can download the file from here.
Edit: Note that in order to get it working, I’ve removed some button that used to be in the ‘Extended Headers’ view. It toggled display of the notes panel. I’m not interested in this feature as I can drag the panel on or off, and I’m not interested in maintaining the module going forward so I’m not going to work out how to get it back.
Edit 2: There may be a problem showing the pane by dragging.
Edit 2b: Problems fixed. Should work as per 1.x now. The button in the extended headers is back. New version is 2.1.
Topics: Javascript | 15 Comments »
December 1st, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Just as a question to you Rick: What extensions do you find most useful?
December 1st, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Mail Redirect — better that forwarding a message is to send it to someone else as if it went to them in the first place
Notary (duh!)
Lightning — calendaring for T’bird done rather well
Provider for Google Calendar — integrates the above with my google calendars
Quicktext — Standard replies all ready to fill-in-the-blanks
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Fantastic!
I’ve been waiting for this for a long time!
Just a quick question (I don’t know if it was possible with the previous version): is it possible to display the notes on the “Folder Pane” instead of the “Message Pane”? Like Lightning is doing. Or maybe leave it configurable.
Thanks for this great hack!
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:41 pm
It would certainly be possible, but my aim was just to get it working on 2.x .. not to take over development from the original author.
Cheers!
Rick Measham
December 11th, 2007 at 3:42 am
nice extension (at least the idea), but seems in very early stage.
some disturbing things:
* what is the “formula” that notes will be saved to e-mail at first time? if i select mail then add some notes and after moving to other mail and back to “noted” mail the notes are not there. if writing second time there the notes will be saved.
* if mail has notes then cahnging to another folder keeps notes pane with last seen notes still open and active, so you can add notes or whatever there and even don’t know to what mail it belongs.
* there should be some sign or column or something that shows in the mails list which mails have notes.
* and if i know a “special word” that i wrote to some e-mail but i dont remember to which e-mail it was added, how can i search that mail using this “special word”?
* if i select e-mail that has no notes then button in mail header is “Hide Notes”, pressing it will open the notes section, pressing it again, it hides the section and then the button name is “Show Notes”. Why only then?
December 11th, 2007 at 5:30 am
G’day Diji,
Thanks for those bugs but I didn’t write, nor wish to maintain this module. I’ve just fixed it so it works (for me) with Thunderbird 2.x.
Follow the link in the article to the original extension and report them there. Hopefully the author will one day see them.
Cheers!
Rick Measham
December 29th, 2007 at 3:33 am
Thank you very much for this update. I am also a dedicated user of Notary for annotating my messages with useful information. I did not update to TBird 2.0 until I found this update to Notary.
Now if the Original Author would only take an interest again so the extension could be developed further
January 14th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Hi everybody the link for download is not working
January 15th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Thank you Rick! Your work is much appreciated.
Jocelyn Haib,
In Firefox, right click the link and click “Save Link As…”
In IE, right click the link and click “Save Target As…”
February 7th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Notary is only saving the first line of the notes I make. The rest disappears after restarting TB.
Am I the only one this happens to?
February 7th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Once again, the aim here was to getting working in T’bird 2.x .. not to take over development. If it doesn’t do what you need, then you need to talk to the author.
That said, I see the same problem as you do. But that has nothing to do with getting it to work in 2.x and isn’t something I need (in fact I’m starting to move away from T’bird for the accounts I needed notes on)
February 20th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Good Hack Bloke !
(and congrats on the young un)
I kluged the version to get it to work on 2.0.0.9,
but your version does not corrupt the From.Subject window so I am using that.
To others in this post, Rick has given us a one-off fix and made it clear he didn’t write and will not maintain it.
To end on a bright note – I was sitting wondering how to ask Thunderbird to allow notes on email, and my mind turned to extensions – so I googled, downloaded (ok mucked about a little), and now I am saited
MOZILLA ROCKS eh !
March 13th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Firstly thanks for the hack, I like Notary.
Secondly, I had an idea and wondered whether you would be able to hack it into Notary. The functionality would go like this:
1. Apply a tag to several emails
2. Open one of the emails with the new tag
3. Show notes
4. The following is displayed (or something like):
Notes for email:
—
Notes for [Tag name]
—
Notes for [Other tag name]…
5. Add your note to the appropriate area
If the note was made in “Notes for [Tag name]” area then when emails tagged with [Tag name] are opened they show that note.
What do you think?
It would be really useful for me as I often use tags to define projects and to have some project/tag notes would be utterly fab.
all the best
Dave
March 13th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
OK, in case it isn’t clear yet: my aim was to get this working with T’bird 2.x. Not to take over maintenance or development. If you want new features: talk to the developer, not to me.
March 14th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Fair point and thanks again for the 2.x fix.