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Making It Your Web

New Version of Google Calendar Watcher

Whether you know it or not, I am a Firefox Extension Developer and have about 7 or so extensions that I've written for Firefox over the last couple of years. Some are functional, such as the Google Calendar Watcher extension, or the Codesnipp.it extension (for users of http://codesnipp.it). And others were created as a little bit of fun, such as the Profanity extension, which puts random swear words on any web page throughout any text!

My most popular extension by far is the Google Calendar Watcher, and it's definitely the one I've been most proud of as I use it on a daily basis. However, it has taken me a long to finally perfect it enough to a). be happy enough with it to release it, and b). for the very strict extension testers to approve it! But, I'm very happy to say that the new version is now available for download on the Firefox Add-on website and can be found Google Calendar Watcher.

So, what's new?

The first thing I did was listen to the various reviews of my original extension which had more teething problems than I realised. I also got a very helpful tester on board to go through the UI and those teething problems to get everything ironed out. Here are some of the updates:

  • There should be no more "NaN" errors in notifications or the sidebar.
  • The whole process of adding new calendars has been streamlined. Originally you could not add private calendars to the extension, but this has now been rectified and it requires very little user interaction to add new calendars. There is a simple one-step process which is explained in more detail when you use the extension.
  • Adding calendars has also been streamlined. The tabs were removed and everything sits on one popup allowing you to quickly and easily add new events to the selected calendar.
  • Which leads me on to another big change. Multiple calendar support! You can now add as many calendars as you have to the extension and choose whether or not to show them in the sidebar. They can also be colour-coded so you know which is which.

What's next?

I have a few ideas for the next version, which I have already started work on. I'm not sure how many or which of the following will be in the next version but I plan on regular updates so make sure to keep your add-ons up-to-date!

  • Style over-haul. I really don't like the way the sidebar looks so this is going to be improved greatly in up-and-coming versions with the potential for themes!
  • Adding more detailed events. At the moment you can simply add an event to a calendar. I would like to add all of the features that Google Calendar offers when adding events such as recurrence information etc.
  • Editing events. This is one that I hope to complete very shortly as I don't like having to go to the website to change an event.
  • Deleting events. Again, there is currently no support for this so it will be added soon!
  • The ability to hide or show past events at your descretion. I didn't think about this when I first created the extension, but some people (including me) won't want to see events that have passed. I'll be adding a checkbox in the extension settings to allow for hiding of past events.

Feature Requests

If you use the add-on and find something is missing or not working correctly, please get in touch and let me know so I can add it to my roadmap, or get it fixed. If you would like an easy way to report an issue I have a project page set up on BitBucket where you can add feature requests or bug reports that I can easily keep track of.

You can find out more information on the extensions' website and download it from https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/google-calendar-watcher/.

Comments (1)

how to contact you by Scott

on 23rd Oct 2014 @ 10:17:40

raised issues on bitbaucket 3 month ago still no contact. Tweeted you many times still no contact. Doubt you will read this.

9 26

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