let's pretend that tonight was productive
My sister emailed asking for webmail recommendations, and of course I sent her a now-superfluous Gmail invite. For some reason this got me thinking about the site, and one feature I wish it had: color-coding of messages. This feature was one of my favorite things about Thunderbird prior to an unfortunate incident involving a massive loss of email and sworn oaths to never use the product again.
But, for the period when I still had my mail, it was easy to set up filters, and quickly tell which messages were from work, which were from the blog, and which were from the various mailing lists to which I'm subscribed. I've got several email accounts pointing at my Gmail address — filtering through the messages at a glance would be handy. And no, I will not just look at the text labels, goddammit.
So I took a crack at making a GreaseMonkey script that provides that Thunderbird-style functionality. Check it out. It color-codes your messages by label. There are only six colors in there at the moment; if you've got more labels than that, some will repeat (and others may be skipped, if they're not present on a page).
It needs some work. Allowing users to customize the colors would be good; so would un-breaking how Gmail highlights rows when you select them. Interested geeks should feel free to have at it.
UPDATE: Wolfson's pointed out that the script ought to be wrapped in an anonymous function. And it appears that when Gmail makes an AJAX callback to check for new mail it drops the formatting. Which means I'll have to dig into Gmail's javascript to figure out which function needs to be overridden in order to reestablish the formatting whenever that check happens. Nuts. Well, it still looks kind of cool.
Comments
Isn't it considered good form to wrap your greasemonkeying in an anonymous function?
it is! but a quick look through mark pilgrim's book and a handful of scripts from userscripts.org didn't remind me how to do that, so I filed it away under "to do".
(do you just wrap it in a blank function declaration? I can never remember if it still runs or not when I do that...)
You just go like
(function () { // function goes here
})()
Couldn't post on SSH page so trying here! - sorry
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tom,
Appreciate greatly what you're trying to explain here. Don't get angry when I say I too have the same sort of problems as john26 and tdz above even after your response. I've been trying hard to get to grips with tunnelling, SSH etc (even reading the o'reilly book!)
I have a simple setup at home - a macmini with ssh server running (as default on port 22). I've punched holes for ports 80 and 443 in the firewall and port forwarded 443 to 22.
From a friends house I can see the default web server page on 80 and I can ssh to my unix prompt specifying port 443. This part I understand and all is hunky dory.
Now, from work! call me thick and stupid but my brain cannot understand the puTTY setup. I use it everyday as part of my work (!) to connect to servers on our lan but I cannot get further.
Question: What is supposed to go in the host name field of session tab? Home wan address? and what port/protocol? tried most combos - nothing works - get Network error. Connection timed out.
Question: How can I tell what kind of proxy work uses? it requires authentication, does this mean socks? and really, should I care?
Question: on the tunnel tab, why create a tunnel from a local port to what is effectively (here's where I probably don't get it) itself? My brain says to me that this tunnel is going nowhere (well, it's chasing it's own tail).
What's really frustrating is that using a browser at work, I can see my web site AND I get an ssh protocol error if I browse to port 443. So I know the ssh server is trying to serve my connection but I can't get out from a terminal.
Sorry for the long winded post but I feel I'm soooo close.
Thanks
That's a very good idea, and a feature that I could definitely use.
I've updated the script slightly. Still needs work, but at least one or two bugs are now resolved.
rockingh0rse, I apologize for that other thread not working. The site needs a global rebuild. I've posted your comment to this thread and answered it there.
I don't really understand anything you are saying, but will take this as an opportunity to discuss two features I wish gmail did have. 1) a send to trash button that was more accessible (perhaps next to the archive button) because I like to delete rather than archive. and 2) an option so that new emails were not saved as threads but instead showed up as new emails. oh and 3) after selecting an email and doing something to it, I wish the check mark next to it would go away.
Simple wishes, no?
I apologize for the nerd-ese. But I can still help!
Well, not with the second item. I think that would require serious changes to how gmail works. But if you'd like a delete button, you can add one with another GreaseMonkey script. You can find that script here (it's called "smart delete" — I haven't tested it myself, but it sounds like what you're looking for).
oh, and item 3 -- it'd be possible to write a script to do that, but I don't know if anyone has yet.
I use the smart delete script, and it's a fucking godsend.
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