Whilst working hard I stumbled across a site which mentioned yet another Mozilla project.

Prism (formerly Webrunner) is desktop based browser that doesn’t have all the baggage that a normal browser has, such as plugins and extensions. So much so that it is becoming known as a “distraction free browser”. It allows you to run one web application per one instance of Prism.

It works by creating shortcuts to Prism passing in parameters which you set in the shortcut creation panel, parameters such as application URL and various window settings. Then simply clicking on the shortcut opens up Prism and takes you directly to the application.

This means you could end up with shortcuts to your favourite sites and applications within your programs menu. Good eh?… I think.

At the moment, each window is the same. Which makes this a simple, cut down browser. Which you’d expect as it sits on top of Firefox anyway. I just can’t see why you would want this? It is being regarded as an application that sits alongside Adobe AIR and Silverlight (kind of..) yet it all it appears to do is load the web application as it does in a browser (admittedly, a hell of a lot quicker).

What would be great is if it could manage the toolbar by creating buttons based on the bundle. For example, the Gmail bundle would create buttons such as “Check for new mail” or “Compose”. Or a Facebook bundle for the many Facebook actions.

At the moment, I can’t see why anyone would want to use Prism over a normal browser. Development is still in its early stages so hopefully future releases will shed more light on the direction Mozilla are planning to take it.

More information:

http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/2007/10/24/prism/
http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/

As good as Gmail is at filtering spam. It would be nice if it would stop putting all emails sent from my web form into the spam folder. As you have probably guessed, enquiries are not actioned until I, by chance, browse my spam folder.

Setting filters and classifying emails as “not spam” makes no difference.

The only solution is to set the from address to be something like “contactform@mysite.com” and adding the email address as a contact. Gmail recognises it as a friend and doesn’t place it in your spam folder. (Remember to include the senders proper email in the body. :) )

Scenario
My email client is Thunderbird. It has been for several years. So that’s several years’ worth of emails, attachments, filters, junk training and plug-ins. The set up is exactly how I would like it to be, well…almost. A feature I really would like to be a touch less painful is being able to share my emails between machines. Up until now I have gotten around this problem by sharing my profile folder, this works ok as long as you remember to close the client on all machines, otherwise you get the dreaded lock file error message. This is where IMAP comes in.

What is IMAP?
Why bother when Google explain it so well.

The Issue
Like I said earlier, I have many emails, attachments, filters which I don’t want to lose. In addition to this, GMAIL has the ability to cope with all that Thunderbird offers. The plan then was to transfer all my emails to GMAIL and set up filters and labels to ultimately end up with that I have in Thunderbird replicated in GMAIL. The major task being copying thousands of emails from a Thunderbird POP account to a GMAIL IMAP account.

Below is an explanation of what I had to do to move from POP to IMAP.

1. Firstly, Enable IMAP!
For some reason, IMAP still hasn’t been enabled in my account. To enable IMAP you need to switch your default language to “English (US)”. This will display the “Enable/Disable” IMAP option AND automatically enable it for you.

2. Setting up IMAP in Thunderbird alongside your existing POP account.
Again, just follow this tutorial. (Other clients)

I now have IMAP enabled in my Gmail account and have set up the account in Thunderbird.

You will notice some new folders under a folder called [GMAIL]. These are standard folders that exist in your Gmail account.

3. Copying emails from POP to IMAP
By simply dragging and dropping the folders from the POP account to the newly created IMAP account creates a label in Gmail AND uploads all emails for you. It is really that simple. It can take a while as it also uploads all attachments.

4. Set up filters
This, I decided, to do on a case by case basis. As a new email arrives, set up the new filter in GMAIL. Tedious, if not annoying, but I want to transfer control over to GMAIL.

… and there you have it. Easy innit!

My POP account remains active as I use it to download all my emails which I now use as a backup.

Here are some hacks and tools that improve how IMAP and Gmail behaves.

Trash can
As it stands, when you delete an email, it will end up in your LOCAL trash can and not in Gmail. To make all deleted emails end up in Gmail’s trash can you will need to modify user.js. There is a way of doing this by adding a new string within config but I could not get this to work whereas this tutorial worked fine.

Folder Labels
If you upload a folder which has subfolders, Gmail creates a label separated with slashes.
e.g. if you upload a folder called “Friends” which contains a sub-folder called “Bob” then all emails in “Bob” are labeled as “Friends/Bob”. So as you can imagine, folders with long names make the labels pretty much unreadable. Fortunately, there are two ways around this:

Folders4Gmail is a Greasemonkey scripts that takes the nested label structures and turns it into a clickable tree.
Better Gmail is a Firefox add-on that does the same, as well as many other mods. Well worth a look.

Other useful resources:
lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/ turn-thunderbird-into-the-ultimate-gmail-imap-client

http://userstyles.org/styles/search/gmail

http://blog.persistent.info/2005/12/greasemonkey-christmas.html

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1320 (Gmail Manager)

http://lifehacker.com/photogallery/top-10-unofficial-gmail-apps/

Update#3 - 25/7/2007 - It just gets worse. Despite claiming to have added free services to my account, I now have in my hands a bill detailing this months charges… you guessed it, I have been charged for everything. They have since credited back the money and I now have to go back to the Retentions department to ask them to sort the discount out… again! When this company was NTL, I called them a handful of times in 5 years, as Virgin Media I am calling them on average 4 times a month. I told you… baboons.

Update#2 - Looks like all is well again, (hopefully). I managed to speak to someone in their retentions department and they have sorted out my account leaving me with what I was promised. In response to queries regarding the actual broadband service, I have found it be on the whole, reliable and quick. Never really had any real problems, the only issues were with their internal billing system.

Update#1 - They have now given me back my phone number. Not even an apology for the cock-up. To make matters worse, the offer of a broadband upgrade from 4mb to 10 (then 20) hasn’t happened. I have been charged for the 20mb line, and the free 24/7 calls to 01 and 02 numbers also hasn’t happened. Basically, the entire upgrade to keep you as a customer offer never happened. grrr…

In a previous post I talked about how much better NTL had become as a result of their buyout by Virgin. Their customer support was near instant and their service worked smoothly… till recently. This story has to be the stuff urban myths are made of.

It started on Saturday, 24th June. At around 3pm I needed to make an outgoing call. I noticed that there was no dial tone. Naturally, I checked wiring and handsets to make sure all was well. Everything seemed OK. I was in a hurry so left to carry out an errand. Upon returning my wife passed on a message. Apparently, a friend had been trying to call and the phone was being answered by a complete stranger.

An angry call to Virgin Media telephone support later at a cost of god-knows per minute from my mobile (which incidentally took me 9 attempts) led me to the conclusion that they are the most incompetent bunch of baboons you are ever likely use. It turned out that, out of the blue, they cancelled my telephone service and had allocated my telephone number to another household. There was no request for a cancellation on my account, yet they decided, to the amazement of the manager I spoke to, to cancel my account.

Not only is the number the contact number for my web development business, it is also the main number for my other business. I managed to speak to the person who currently has my phone number, she told me that this was the second time it had happened to her. The reason they have my number is because their previous number was also as a result of a phantom request for a line cancellation where the number was the main contact number for another company. As with the previous company, she had received many calls regarding work. In her own words, “you have had calls all day”. So much so that they have taken the phone off the hook.

So, as of 1pm the next day, I am still without a telephone line. Apparently, I have to wait till Monday to reverse the change as that is when the dumb-ass telephone department opens.

Oh, did I mention that I won’t be reimbursed for the loss of earnings, time and the cost of calling their support line from my mobile phone? Idiots I tell you, IDIOTS!