Gmail Notifier

Q: What about MAC OS X support?
The current version will not work on MAC OS X. Maybe at a later date, feel free to port it to objective C and make it work without running pygtk under X windows but otherwise there are no plans to port it in the near future (unfortunately) we want it running on OS X as well!

Q: I get an error about the line self.window.set_keep_above(1), why?
You are using a too old version of gtk, upgrade.

Q: I get a AttributeError: GmailThread instance has no attribute 'info' error, what does that mean?
It means you didn't read the README and tried to use a different version of libgmail than the one included.

Q: That's an unfortunate shade of red you've chosen for the popup, how can I change it?
Gmail Notifier is completely skinable, simply open background.jpg in your favourite image editor and change it however you like, the same goes for the icon, just edit icon.jpg. If you come up with a really nice skin, feel free to send it to me and it may be added to a future relaese.

Q: Whenever I start Gmail notifier, it pops up and says the connection to Gmail failed, I'm connected to the net, and I can login to my Gmail account normally, so why?
Are you using a proxy? The Notifier does not have proxy support.

Q: Is it OK to use this? Won't Google shut you out of your account or somthing?
Although I have read of several people complaining that Google sent them mail messages warning them not to use other software to interface with their system, an awful lot of software has been written that does, I have been using Gmail Notifier for about two years now, along with 50 or so others and there have been no problems. Since Google currently provides no Linux alternative to their current Windows Notifier it seems only fair that people will write things to do the same job. And, bear in mind that the Notifier checks your mail in the same way that you would if you logged into their site normally, so it really makes no difference anyway.

Q: So are you in any way associated with Google?
In no way whatsoever. Our software interfaces with their brilliant mail system. That is all. We also do not provide any kind support for Googles own Windows notifier for those of you who seem to think we do.

Q: What's the point in this? Why not just use the Firefox plugin?
I tried to live with the Firefox one as long as possible, but had a few problems with it and also didn't always want to have a browser open, also, this Notifier provides a much more obvious popup that you will see whether your browser is minimized or not.

Q: How can I be involved in this project?
The best way for you to be involved is by first reading the gmail-notify-devel mailing list archives to get an idea as to what needs doing and what features people are requesting eg. sound support, ability to check multiple accounts. a lot of the stuff that needs doing is really easy stuff and providing you do it properly and give what you do some thought we would love to have you as a developer on the project (which means you will be able to do CVS commits etc) once you've read the devel mailing list archives, join the mailing list yourself and let us know what you'd like to do. Make sure you checkout the very latest CVS code, you're really wasting your time making changes to any other version, the tarball and debian package go out of date from the code on CVS very quickly. The mailing list archives are available here and you can join the developers mailing list here.

Gail Notifier