Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Google Wave in Thunderbird 3

While it's not in the format I would ideally want, I recently got Google Wave inside Thunderbird 3. How, you might ask. Simple: the new content tabs feature.

So, to do it, go into the Error Console, and type this line in: Components.classes['@mozilla.org/appshell/window-mediator;1'].getService(Components.interfaces.nsIWindowMediator).getMostRecentWindow("mail:3pane").document.getElementById("tabmail").openTab("contentTab", {contentPage: "https://wave.google.com/wave/?nouacheck"});. Note that Google Wave for some idiotic reason decides that Thunderbird isn't a valid UA to be using, so you have to convince it to disable the UA with the ?nouacheck. I thought browser sniffing died out years ago...

For bonus points, if you restart Thunderbird, the tab will stay open, so all you need to do is login again!

10 comments:

Colby Russell said...

"While it's not in the format I would ideally want, I recently got Google Wave inside Thunderbird 3."

So has Google decided yet on a clear distinction between the protocol and their client+server reference implementation? It seems like any attempt to displace something with as much momentum as e-mail will fail if it doesn't simultaneously offer a replacement for the benefits and use cases of the in-place technology. In the case of Wave versus e-mail, the big one is distribution/client-agnosticism.

Even if the Google Wave Federation Protocol fully materializes, we even see substantial adoption adoption, and Google and others aren't breaking things with vendor-specific extensions that create walled gardens and leave other vendors and their users in the dark, it seems like Google solidified the outcome of the full-displacement aspect when they debuted without support for federation intact.

Anonymous said...

Very cool, but I can't seem to log out again!

Adrianer said...

"I thought browser sniffing died out years ago..."

It didn't. Just try to surf the web e.g. with the UA string of Camino or SeaMonkey - you'll hit such websites all the time...

AFD said...

Not quite working for me on Fedora 12 with TB v.3.0 beta 4.

I get the right webpage up in TB tab when hitting evaluate and then can't login with the webpage form.

Instead I have a tab opened for me in Firefox v.3.5.5-1.

If there's an option in FF or TB I should have enabled/disabled regarding the browser sniffing please let me know.

I've heard not everyone running this on Linux OSes is having problems.

AFD said...

ps. here are the errors spit out by TB when I hit evaluate (I'm wondering if setting the variables in the hack script would work as I'm on a netbook with 1024x600 res):

Warning: Error in parsing value for 'margin-top'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=wave&passive=true&nui=1&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&ltmpl=standard
Line: 6

Warning: Error in parsing value for 'width'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=wave&passive=true&nui=1&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&ltmpl=standard
Line: 6

Warning: Error in parsing value for 'height'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=wave&passive=true&nui=1&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&ltmpl=standard
Line: 6

Warning: Unknown property 'bgcolor'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=wave&passive=true&nui=1&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&ltmpl=standard
Line: 7

Warning: Unknown property 'zoom'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=wave&passive=true&nui=1&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&followup=https%3A%2F%2Fwave.google.com%2Fwave%2F%3Fnouacheck&ltmpl=standard
Line: 157

Unknown said...

"Not quite working for me on Fedora 12 with TB v.3.0 beta 4.

I get the right webpage up in TB tab when hitting evaluate and then can't login with the webpage form.

Instead I have a tab opened for me in Firefox v.3.5.5-1."

Same problem here.

Unknown said...

Hi

Error in Thunderbird 3.0b1

Tabmode is undefined

Anonymous said...

Maybe you guys should be using the final release build?

AFD said...

Running Fedora 12 a 'yum update' just DLed and installed the latest version of Thunderbird (v.3.0-4).

The issue with running Wave inside Thunderbird is now fixed using the same line of code you published.

feranick said...

I made a set of addons that add external websites as tabs in tbird (wave, voice, calendar, yahoo mail, hotmail, facebook):

http://electronsoftware.altervista.org/extensions/