Why did we create MailBrowser Gmail Plugin?
Rohit NadhaniWhy did we create MailBrowser (MB)?
This the first blog post from MB team and I guess it is the right place to answer this question.
Our company Webyog migrated from Outlook to Gmail a couple of years back and never looked back. Webyog runs on Google Apps Premier Edition and we are extremely happy with the service.
After migrating from Outlook, we began to miss some of the great 3rd party plugins for Outlook. We didn’t want to go back to Outlook. Outlook is so 1990′s!
While Gmail is awesome, we thought we can further improve the experience of Gmail by providing an external plugin. MailBrowser is a Gmail plugin that helps you easily manage your contacts and attachments. I will not list down all the features of MB in this blog post. You can read the complete feature list and FAQ.
Why is MB not a web app?
Yes, there are some web apps that provide similar features for Gmail. Based on our initial study, many users don’t like web apps for this particular problem. They disliked the fact that such web apps store your Gmail password. The recent RockYou debacle is a great example of why you should generally avoid storing important credentials with 3rd parties.
Addionally, MB provides offline access to your attachments and makes its content searchable using desktop search – improving desktop search capabilities. Gmail does not search inside attachments currently.
Of course, there are some inherent advantages of using a web app in this situation. Using a web app gives you device independence and ensures automatic backup of your data.
MB attempts to bring these benefits of a web based (or cloud) app along with the security, privacy and speed advantages of a desktop app. MB will make a local copy of your contacts and attachments in your hard-disk. If you enter additional data (for example, notes and tags for a contact) it will store these details directly in your Google account. If you install and use MB from multiple computers the data will be synchronized automatically.
The road ahead
We have big plans for MB. Here is our wishlist. What features would you like to see on priority?
- Social Media Integration (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
- Enterprise App. Integration (Salesforce, etc)
- Support for other mail providers (Yahoo Mail, Live Mail, Any IMAP provider, etc)
- Chrome/Safari Support
- Ability to sort and filter emails & contacts by importance
- Better attachment management
- Mobile support
- Extract links shared with contacts
- Sort contacts by importance
Please leave your comment here, participate at the Community Forums, follow @mailbrowser on Twitter or contact us directly at feedback@mailbrowser.com
We are very excited about releasing MB and hope you will like it!
Comments(60)
#1 Priority: Chrome/Safari Support
#2 Priority: Mobile Support
The rest is just gravy.. I need the meat first.
Cool! Scoble just tweeted about this plugin and that’s how I ended up here. Any plans for creating a Chrome extension/version?
Nice job guys, I taking it for a test drive today.
I’m getting an error message when trying to run the mailbrowser126.exe.
Installer integrity check has failed …
@Hari, Chrome plugin is almost ready. There is no option for creating a sidebar in Chrome yet. We are waiting for that.
@Chuck, I think your installer is corrupted. Please try downloading it again.
@chirag still getting the error message. I have tried several different times.
@Chuck, Please try downloading from here. I’ve zipped & uploaded the installer.
Nice plugin.
Chrome plugin please!!
@chirag I downloaded the zip file without issues but get an error when trying to extract.
#1 Priority: Chrome
#2 Priority: Social Media integration — Facebook FIRST !
Rest can come along after that. I read Scoble’s tweet and hence I’m here. Will be in India next month, maybe I can go to Bangalore to say hello!
@Chris, we’d be happy to meet you. Just send a mail to feedback@mailbrowser.com once you are sure of your itinerary.
What are your plans to support Linux users? The Mailbrowser plugin is useless for me otherwise.
@Karl, we will support Linux if enough people ask for it! But no plans for now. Technically, the underlying C++ code is cross-platform, so shouldn’t be a big issue
@Chris, I’ve uploaded the installer in a third party hosting provider. Here is the link. Please try.
@Chirag it worked when I used the third party hosting provider. Thanks.
[...] In their intro blog post MailBrowser says they created it because they wanted all the cool features of Outlook but they didn’t want to “go back” to Microsoft. Here’s a video demo of their plugin. [...]
HI,
Another person who’s come by thanks to Scoble, and just to say i love what you have so far in the video – but.. i only use Safari and (more and more), Chrome. I join virtually everybody else in asking for this to be prioritised and use you guys.
Keep up the great work
William
This is awesome, and it’s amazing how I find out about another one last week, and now Mailbrowser! There are plenty of great services out there, and like this one. When will it be coming to Google Chrome?
Chrome first please, thanks Scoble for pointing this out…
Cool stuff guys. Neat implementation and a sorely needed plugin. To me Facebook, Linkedin, Yahoo/Hotmail integration will be the priority. Once you have that I can junk all my python scripts + gconsync
Another feature which could be useful will be the activity stream of a contact when viewing the contact list.
Great work.
[...] at the contact’s social networking profiles. MailBrowser plans to add this functionality in a future version. Currently, the service can only display details about a contact’s domain and [...]
I agree with Karl Sackett. MailBrowser is a great tool, but Linux support is essential. I am in the process of switching completely over to Linux. I don’t want to introduce a tool like this to my Windows users just to have to take it away when we ditch Windows.
Very nice indeed, but I’m looking forward to a Chrome plugin as that’s my primary browser of choice.
Please, advise me when will be available The MailBrowser Gmail for Google Chrome Browser. I don´t understand how a product orientend for Google doesn’t work with the Google Browser.
[...] Gist, it’s a great platform to build on, and Webyog’s Rohit Nadhani says that there are plans for many more Xobni-like features in MailBrowser, including social media integration, integration with enterprise apps (like Salesforce) and the [...]
Salesforce.com integration. This will be a killer app and you should charge for it.
@Renato,
We are working on Chrome support. Chrome does not support sidebar yet
Researching on workarounds.
That thing is great! Prio: 1) Chrome, 2) Mobile 3) Social Integration (F’book) 4) Safari
I have a nearly full gmail box going back to 2005. The thought of downloading a copy of all attachments to my hard drive is … breathtaking (if not dangerous by re-contamination of one or two virus laden or spyware laden files). I love the contact features but is there a way to scale back the attachment management to maybe just an index of attachments? Much preferred over all that old garbage on my hard drive.
@Jack,
There is an option to specify a date range for mails. Preferences->List of Accounts->Edit Account->Show Options
Thanx to Scobel, and CHROME a must!
Why dont you have a linux version ?
Plz come up for chrome. By the way, i was in search for this kind of product.
“…support Linux if enough people ask for it”
Another vote for Linux here
A great addition to gmail but for my purposes only if linux and chrome are supported.
Tried it last night and it was indexing until I had to shut off the machine. Tried this morning and now it’s all in black asking to try again. Click on it, but nothing happens. Was a great idea, but I guess I’ll have to return to the conventional.
@Luis,
Sorry for the confusion. It appears like MailBrowser got disconnected from IMAP when you switched off the server. I guess the status bar didn’t update properly this morning. Can you double-check the status from Preferences->List of Accounts?
We have noticed a similar bug in some situations.
Great plug in, but what about linux?
Why is it an app on the Mac?
There is no UI. Just a pref. dialog.
It should always “be on” when the browser is running and then go back to sleep to save system resources.
Now you will always forget to launch it and you get that ugly grey empty sidebar….
/Mikael
@Mikael
MailBrowser app is getting added in login items by default.
After that user can either keep or remove the ‘open at login’ option from dock.
It will start running on every login, provided user has not unchecked ‘open at login’ specifically.
Please let us know if it is not working for you.
-Parimal Das
[...] is made by an Indian Company- Webyog and as per them that it’s the perfect plugin if you don’t want to use Outlook with Gmail. You can find more [...]
#1 Enterprise App. Integration (Salesforce, etc)
#2 Better attachment management
#3 Mobile support
#4 Extract links shared with contacts
#5 Sort contacts by importance
#6 Ability to sort and filter emails & contacts by importance
#7 Social Media Integration (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc)
#8 Support for other mail providers (Yahoo Mail, Live Mail, Any IMAP provider, etc)
#9 Chrome/Safari Support
It works but I still think this should be implemented as a pref. pane since there is no UI for the app. Just some preferences, hence it belongs with the preferences.
I don’t want to see it in the Dock. I don’t want to see it when I cycle thorough my Apps with Command+Tab.
I can accept a Menu Item (optional) to show it’s status and to quickly reach the pref dialog.
I haven’t tried the Windows version…is it an app as well or does it just sit in the Tray? It should sit in the Tray and only show when you click on it asks for it. See how Live Sync or Crashplan does that very nicely on Windows.
Regards Mikael
More feedback.
MailBrowser doesn’t work for me at works since our Firewall won’t allow IMAP. So at work I get the grey empty sidebar. It shouldn’t show up if MailBrowser can’t connect or isn’t running. Show it more discrete on the Status bar Icon please:-)
Regards Mikael
@Mikael
Thanks for the suggestions, we will try to incorporate them after finishing the priority items (in “The road ahead”).
In Windows, MailBrowser sits in the Tray.
We are fixing this firewall issue and will come up with a fix soon.
Regards Parimal
@All,
We have released a bug fix update. Please update your copy of MailBrowser if you’ve faced any of the bugs described.
Regards,
Chirag
Another vote for Linux here. The app is great, but I won’t reboot and change my OS to use it.
One more vote for Linux support!
I have the feeling that the Linux users wouldn’t be that much outnumbered by the Mac crowd.
Cheers,
Sz.
And another vote for Linux support, would be more then happy to give your plugin a try.
I couldn’t find a topic on the forum for it, so I leave it in the comments here
I would love to have social media integration, especially facebook.
Sounds great. But please add Opera support.
I’d LOVE Safari support. Thanks for asking.
Top priority : chrome
[...] the release the most coveted feature was Google Chrome support. We heard it folks! With this release MailBrowser works with Google Chrome. We were little [...]
What are the advantages of MailBrowser compared to offline Gmail? How do the two work together?
Just when I thought I had something like a Xobni for Gmail – bad luck – I’m on linux.
Any plans for linux?
Another reason for linux –
“Our company Webyog migrated from Outlook to Gmail a couple of years back and never looked back. Webyog runs on Google Apps Premier Edition and we are extremely happy with the service.
After migrating from Outlook, we began to miss some of the great 3rd party plugins for Outlook. We didn’t want to go back to Outlook. Outlook is so 1990’s!”
Windows is equally 1990′s if you have a taste of desktop Linux.
@indigene
No serious user would install a unix system on a personal computer. Unix is great for servers but not for click-click individuals. Who really wants to ./configure in 2010? No one.
Great for windows but I also use Linix (Ubuntu) so add my vote for a Linix version
Took test run today – helps. Some quick feedback
1. When entering contacts – any way to index so as you type characters you can see contact options to select (like google or bing search) – have 200 contacts and only 50 shown per page?
2. Any way to convert email address contact (email addresses are added as contacts) as regular contacts from within browser window without having to go out of mailbrowser? Similar question, possible to add simple things (email, phone number) to a contact without leaving mailbrowser?
3. Any way to take an email contact and attribute to existing contact so that all emails are reindexed as one contact?
4. Social networking – Linkedin information would be great as another Tab on mailbrowser
5. Any way to see all aggregate of all contacts with group and related emails, attachments etc?
@Dave
Thanks a lot Dave.
We have added your valuable suggestions to our wish-list.
We will incorporate them in future releases of MB.
Regards
Parimal