A new challenger has appeared!
I have chosen my project for OSD600 and it is the Thunderbird Picture Preview. My current plan on how to tackle such a project is as followed…
- Check the mail if there is an attachment
- Filter the list of attachments to only images (jpg, png, etc.)
- Put a button or something to start the picture preview (got to see how the chrome is laid out in TB)
- Display the image (most likely centered in the middle of the screen, maybe a new “window”) with slide show like abilities. (which is the main bulk of the extension and of course will be the most difficult part)
Now on to the difficulties…
- I am not a heavy Thunderbird user. I use TB just to grab my email, archive it locally, read it, send emails on occasion (which I don’t do often). I know that is like the bulk of what an email client does but like I don’t touch any of the stuff in TB. I don’t go installing extensions like mad (unlike Firefox). The only extensions I have on TB are webmail extensions to grab from my hotmail, live, etc.
- This is my first time to work on an extension. No time like the present to get started 🙂
- Also my first time working on a HUGE code base that I barely understand on. Not like other courses where you build a program from scratch (which is easy since you KNOW the WHOLE program).
- I am no Javascript expert.
- I don’t get email with attachments, let alone ones with pictures. As I don’t use email to communicate between friends and family, I actually IM, meet up with them or use other means to communicate.
Not to be discouraged though. I have my peers, teachers like Chris and Dave and the community of Mozilla to help me out! Additionally I have already got my feet wet on certain aspects of Mozilla code base as I had to modify Firefox for my workplace. I have also started to look into some extensions as a base to work on like Attachment Extractor as it already grabs the attachments of the email (which is my 1st part to do in my list).
And so the battle begins…