Jeff Mesnil

RFE: Google Suggest for GMail

I almost never go to Google home page these days: I use a bookmarklet to directly go to Google results page instead. However with their suggest feature, Google has convinced me that it’s worth it to go again to their homepage.
Now a RFE for Googlers: I’d like is to have this suggest feature in GMail when I do a mail search. I type from: in the search field and GMail should suggest me a list of senders. That’d be cool and useful…

Google is not the first web site to make extensive use of XmlHttpRequest but they show how it can be done to enhance the web experience. As more developpers become aware of such functionalities, it will create a new breed of web applications which extend the web experience by embracing its principles rather than just mocking desktop applications within the browser.

Prototype of CRC Card Whiteboard with Mozilla

Following my latest blog on the usefulness of a CRC Card whiteboard based on Mozilla and XBL, I made a simple prototype of such a whiteboard (works with Mozilla-based browsers only).
I only prototyped the client side of the whiteboard. But if that whiteboard was coupled with Wiki software on the server (for version control mainly but also to annotate the cards if the need arises), it could be a simple tool to communicate simple designs between development teams which are geographically separated.

When I had some time, I’ll try to integrate it with a Wiki.

CRC Card based extension with Mozilla and XBL

Could it be a good idea to develop a CRC Card-based whiteboard with Mozilla and XBL (similar to the sticky note example)?
It may be interesting to use it similarly to a Wiki to share design information simply. I made a quick search for such a Firefox extension but I found nothing.

Is it worth it?

Setup a personal Wiki (Part I)

I finally decided to setup a personal Wiki on my web site.

I have taken the habit to use plain text files to keep track of my daily work. I can then simply use grep when I need to retrieve any information. I have files for every week that I fill as I work. It went quite well for some time but it has reached some shortcomings and I’m looking for an alternative.

The main disadvantage of plain text files is that is not internet friendly. Most of my work deals with URL (bugzilla URL, corporate wiki URL, client site URL generating errors,…). It’s not a big deal to copy/paste from the files to the browser but when you have to do very often everyday, it becomes boring. Secondly, it’s quite inconvenient to backup these files. I let them in the home directory on the workstation of my client company but I’ve to think to back them up weekly or monthly on my USB drive. I also need from time to time to refer from a file to another one (e.g. I encounter a problem I’ve worked on weeks ago and I’d like to refer to the first encounter without repeating myself). plain text is not good for such resource links…

My requirement for these files were pretty simple:

• they should be be viewable directly in a web browser to take advantage of the URLs
• they should be stored on my web server so that I can access them from anywhere…
• … but I should be the only one allowed to view them
• it should be simple and straightforward to edit and modify them without uploads every time
• the file format should be as close as possible from plain text to keep editing simple
• Files should be searchable efficiently

A wiki meets all these requirements but the authorization one (more on that later). So I decided to give it a try and install a personal Wiki on my hosted web site.

I had to take into account my web site requirements to choose the right Wiki implemenation (among all the available ones):

• only Perl, Python or PHP implementation
• if a database is needed, only MySQL is an option
• I don’t have a SSH access, so the installation and configuration setup has to be done only through the web or FTP

With these requirements in mind, I made a (completely subjective) short list:

• MoinMoin
• Twiki
• PhpWiki
• UseMod
• MediaWiki

I did not find enough information on MoinMoin to install it without shell access. I had the opportunity to use Twiki and I don’t like it (it works great but I find it too bloated). I did not find any clear installation documentation on PhpWiki web site (it didn’t pass my 5-minute test).
So the only remaining ones were UseMod and MediaWiki. And both had good documentation and were a breeze to install.

UseMod is a no-nonsense Wiki, very similar to the original Wiki. One Perl script, one data directory to store the files and that’s it. You just have to change a few settings in the script, upload it on the web site and create the wiki directory.

MediaWiki has more features than UseMod. It is based on PHP and MySQL but is also very simple to install. You just have to upload a directory on your web site and use the web based wizard to configure everything (including MySQL tables). There is some chmod to do but nothing more complicate (It’s quite similar to the installation of Movable Type).
So in less than twenty minutes, I had downloaded and configured these two Wiki engines on my web site.

Next time, a comparison between the two and which one I finally decided to use.

Simple trick to make Gmail remember your queries

I often make the same search queries in Gmail (e.g. give me all the mails I sent to a specific mailing list). Unfortunately, these queries are not kept by Gmail and you have to type them everytime.
But I found a simple way to make Gmail remember them.

So, if you want to access Gmail queries directly from its search field history, you just have to search for them on Google (provided you have the Google cookie).
Since Gmail seach field kept the history of your Google searches, they will be available next time you search mails in Gmail.

Gmail new features: Drafts and Mail Forwarding

Google has updated Gmail and added a few features such as inline contacts and atom feed (more details).

On my account I saw two other great features:

• the ability to save drafts
• mail forwarding

Some screenshots:

Drafts saving was a feature I was eagerly expecting (I’ve been bitten too much times writing a mail in Gmail and accidentally closing the tab…)

Bookmarking with Firefox and del.icio.us

With Firefox and del.icio.us I rediscovered the use of bookmarking.
I always found bookmarking too tedious for several reasons.
First, I gave up on categorizing bookmarks because I never found a hierarchy that satisfied me. So all my bookmarks end in the “to classify” folder and never moved from there!
Another inconvenient is that bookmarks are tedious to share between different computers. I don’t want to transfer my bookmarks between all the browser I use on different computers. So what I wanted are bookmarks stored on a server. But then it couldn’t be integrated in the browser and I’d have to go to the web page every time I want to go to a page I bookmarked.

So, at the end of the day, I restrict my bookmarks use to only two specific cases:

• bookmarklets (such a BlogThis!, post to del.icio.us, …)
• web pages that I want to access through customized keywords (dict:, bug:,…)

For the rest, I rely on the browser location bar history and Google. But this solution is not good enough.

At the same time, I started to use del.icio.us to keep an eye on interesting web pages. Del.icio.us comes with handy bookmarklets which makes it easy to add a bookmark to del.icio.us without going to the web site. Del.icio.us has also interesting social effects and is in itself a source of information to check what other people are bookmarking.
However, to use your bookmarks, you still have to go to their web site.

Finally, enter firefox 1.0 PR and its live bookmarks. I added a live bookmark on my del.icio.us feed and voila! I had what I wanted: shared bookmarks, integrated in the browser that I can use as is (I don’t have to go to del.icio.us site anymore).
Cedric also gave me a good idea: I added a second live bookmarks for the del.icio.us bookmarks I tagged with “toread” for pages I plan to read later when I got some time. It quite easy to categorize my bookmarks in the browser, I just have to use del.icio.us feeds for the different tags I use. But all in all, a feed for the “toread” tag and another for all my bookmarks seem enough.

“Keep new” option in Bloglines

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p>I just saw today that there is a new option in Bloglines to keep a blog article as new.

Below every article, there is a “keep new” checkbox which will mark permanently the article as new. I find it handy when in the morning I quickly browse the weblogs and want to read more carefully some articles later. The problem with bloglines, it that once you’ve selected a blog, all the new articles are marked as read. Even if you haven’t read all of them…

Bloglines already offered a similar feature for that (Clipping) but I find the user interface too tedious (to much clicks and setting) and the clipped article does not given enough hints about the weblog it belongs to.

This new checkbox solves partially one of the biggest disadvantage of Bloglines for me, the inability to mark articles of interest. It’s great for temporary marking (e.g. for mail to read later in the day) but it’s not very useful for “reference” articles since the display hints are the same for unread articles and articles marked as new.
For these reference articles, I still prefer to bookmark them in my del.icio.us bookmarks.

Google Browser and Alchemy

There’s been some noise concerning an eventual web browser from Google. Most bloggers bet on a Gecko-based HTML browser with features specific to Google applications (such as Gmail, Picasa or Blogger). If what Google targets is a Google-branded Firefox with specific extensions, I’m highly unimpressed. We can already get most of this stuff quite conveniently and I don’t see any added values. The Google brand won’t be enough to make me switch from neither Firefox nor Safari.

However if you take into account Adam Bosworth, things may get more interesting. A Web Browser from Google would be a perfect fit for Adam’s Alchemy project (Alchemy is in fact a BEA project but Adam was the driving force behind it).

From that perspective, there seems to be a lot more potential for a Google Web Browser. One of the advantage I see is that it could simplify and make it possible to get a push-based Web that Adam envisions. If you look at Gmail, Google has already started to push information to the browser, I almost never update Gmail web page because it is refreshed often enough that I got my mails already sitting in the Inbox. What’s more, it is not a big “Refresh” with all the page being reloaded, they use XmlHttpRequest to only update the relevant portions of the page.

Frankly, I don’t see all the potential that Alchemy can bring to the Web experience but I’d really like to learn more about it.

p.s.: Sometimes I feel that my weblog is dedicated only to Google! I definitely need to post some Java ramblings…