Can an add-on activate when the user is composing a message? If so, can you point me to an example?
Context: I would like to detect when the user has attached a file and replace it with a link instead.
As of now there is not support for interacting with compose window.
Related
Is it possible to create an action to trigger a function whenever the user is composing an email?
I am hoping to add an extra button to the UI for composing emails which will insert some text into the email based on the subject and recipients of the email. Looking through the gmail addon docs I can't seem to find a way to do this.
Would this be something better suited as an actual chrome extension instead?
In short : No
For now , you can not add buttons or any other controls inside the Gmail UI. The add on does not do that. And moreover addons cannot listen into GmailUI except for triggering themselves. Thus we cannot know if the user had started typing into the compose window. It is better to create chrome extensions instead, for these kind of tasks.
Note: Gmail addons are at a nascent state. Probably, we might receive these event handlers at a later stage.
I'm working on an extension that's supposed to use the content of the page to determine whether to show an interface to the user.
The ways to show an interface, if I'm correct, are using a browser action or a page action.
And neither can be triggered programmatically. But content scripts could be written to inject an equivalent GUI into the webpage.
So, does it make sense to modify the DOM using content-scripts to display an interface as a substitute for page action? It seems like an obvious work around to me, and I'm sure there are good reasons to not let page actions be triggered programmatically.
Well, modifying DOM must be done by only Content Scripts, as that is the reason they exist.
Want to fetch any data from current page, alter anything in the page, add new UI in the page - whatever, content script will help you do that.
It has nothing to do with Page script Or Browser Script.
YES, you can not programatically trigger page/browser action. It has to be done by explicit clicking.
But if you want to open a UI by clicking a chrome extension, then there is a popup js for that.
When an extension is installed in chrome, a popup comes up which says [Extension_name] has been added to chrome.
This is the default popup having extension icon and some message. I want to modify this popup data. is there any api which we can use to modify it.
There is no such API, but you can use onInstalled event to open new tab with your own description.
In addition to Deliaz's answer, you can create either a browser action or a page action popup. You can change popup html dynamically to make it look completely different depending on the situation but you can't open it programmatically (desktop notifications could be used for alerts).
Here's another reference which might also help.
I came to know that crossrider.com is helping us to develop extension for different browsers, while keeping the same code.
I have two questions
Question 1:
After going through docs and libraries in crossrider, I still wonder how to get the active tab url.
Question 2:
I also need to open a popup after clicking toolbar icon, similar to google chrome extension.
I came across crossrider siderbar plugin. But, I am unable to change the url for sidebar dynamically.
Do we have any other crossrider plugins which opens like an popup ?
Answer Q1: You can use our appAPI.tabs.onTabSelectionChanged(function callback([{tabId, tabUrl}])) method (soon to be documented). To keep track of the ActiveTab URL, in the callback, simply set a global variable to the callback's optional tabUrl parameter. This is currently supported in Chrome and Firefox.
Answer Q2: I'm afraid that currently there isn't a native popup plugin (your welcome to write one and submit it for consideration ;-)). However, you can configure and use jQueryUI popups from within the extension.
I need to get active tab url in IE.
If it is not possible using jquery in IE, can we use messaging api to send messages from pages to background scope, and store the active tab url in background's global variable?
I'm trying to figure out how can I add a button to the Gmail compose window.
In "Gmail Labs" they have some extensions that add certain buttons For example "Send & Archive" button and "Inserting images" button, so I assume this is possible.
I checked their API here and it seems that you can either add a gadget to left sidebar or use contextual gadgets that are dependent on the message context. I'm looking for a way to add a button to the toolbar of the compose window, and both options don't seem to support it.
Do you know how can this be done?
If it's not possible using Gmail API, is there another way I can achieve this? Maybe by creating a Google Chrome extension or user scripts?
I would appreciate any info that can direct me in the right direction.
Thanks.
The Gmail Labs have special permissions because they are written by Google Employees, unfortunately we mortals don't have such power. There is a way around it of course and you've correctly pointed out that it is to make a Chrome Extension or a UserScript. If you choose to do a Chrome Extension it will just be a wrapper for a UserScript anyway
You will have to create and inject the button programmatically. This will involve quite a bit of scouring the Gmail source code (spoiler: it's ugly).
Without more details about what you want to do, I won't be able to provide much more help but I can help you with one problem right away. You have to make your script wait until the Gmail loading process is done which is a bit of a challenge. This is the solution I'm currently using in Minimalist:
function bootstrap() {
target = document.querySelectorAll('.vt:not(.SFzvCe)');
if (document.querySelectorAll('html.xiu1Fc, html.aao')[0] == null) {
return;
}
if (target.length > 0) {
// loaded, do stuff
} else {
window.setTimeout(bootstrap, 200);
}
}
window.addEventListener('DOMSubtreeModified', bootstrap);
That version waits for the chat to fully load. Let me know if you have any other questions: #anstosa
You can use InboxSDK for that.
Here is documentation link
Also you have a Hello world repo, where is a solved your problem
hello repo