Photo sync will remain disabled until the issue is resolved.

Sorry folks.  This is bad news for everyone who really likes photo sync (who doesn’t!).  But the addon’s longstanding policy of prioritizing correctness over features really does work in everyone’s best interests.

Photo sync is still available in the testing release.

The bug relates to the use of Google photo sync. A workaround is in addon versions 0.8.35 or later. Upgrade the addon in the normal way (Tools/Addons/Find Updates) and sync should work fine.

Upgrading to this release forces a slow-sync after which you’ll find that any contacts that have a photo in either Google or Thunderbird now have a matching photo on the other side!

Platforms that’s aren’t supported for photo sync - Zimbra, Postbox, SpiceBird, Thunderbird 2. Sorry folks - it’s a matter of limited resources.

Enjoy!

Update 2011-05-03: photo sync promoted from the testing release to production.

Description

If you’ve encountered this bug, the addon will be out of sync with Google.

Solution

To get back into sync, Visit Tools/Zindus, then select ‘Reset’ then ‘Sync Now’.

More Information

When the addon adds a contact to Google, and two seconds later asks Google about recent changes, Google occasionally forgets to tell the addon about the contact that was recently added.

That’s an error. When asked, the Google Contacts API should always tell the addon about recently added contacts, regardless of whether they were added two seconds or two days ago.

To track progress on this bug, sign in to Google, visit the bug report and ’star’ the issue to be notified of any change.

Are you likely to encounter it again? Probably not. The bug doesn’t seem to be common. But it is currently the #1 most frequently reported bug.

If you do encounter this bug, you now know what it’s about and what to do!

In June 2009, Google released version 3 of the Google Contacts data API. We cheered the structured postal addresses feature, which interchanges Google’s free-format postal address field with Thunderbird’s structured (street, city, zip, country) fields.

Two months later, Google said that they were working hard on implementation.

Here we are, a year later and at the ghost town that is the current Google Contacts effort, the tracking bug is marked as:

• low priority
• an “enhancement”, not a “defect”

Google’s structured postal address feature is the road to the best user experience - offering users a consistent view of postal addresses across Thunderbird, Google and mobile phone.  But if Google doesn’t implement the feature, the addon will (reluctantly) support a .csv format sometime in 2011.

You can “star” Google’s tracking bug to be notified of any changes.

However in Zimbra 6.x, the format of the birthday field changed from yyyy-mm-dd to free format text.  A Zimbra 6.x birthday field can contain: “17/4/1984″, “4/17/1984 or “hello world!”.

The loss of structure in Zimbra’s birthday field means that the addon can’t reliably sync it.  Sorry!

Feel free to comment either here or on the zimbra forum thread.

UPDATE: 2010-05-01…

Zimbra version 6.07 will return to yyyy-mm-dd, so the addon will retain sync of birthday field.

The Zimbra bugfix does not migrate birthday values entered as nn/nn/yyyy , so any Zimbra users who entered birthdays in Zimbra versions 6.0-6.06 will have to change those values to yyyy-mm-dd by hand.

chrome://zindus/content/syncfsm.js:8475

then you have encountered google bug 1915.

Status update: 6 April 2010 - workarounds for this bug are available:

• the zindus.com release: 0.8.14.2 or later
• the addons.mozilla.org release: 0.8.13.3 or later
• the testing release is not vulnerable to this bug

To update the addon, visit Tools/Addons/Find Updates.

To get back into sync:

• visit Tools/Zindus
• select ‘Reset’ then ‘Sync Now’

As an experiment, the testing release of the addon now includes a built-in SQLite addressbook that syncs with Google and Zimbra.

This is three experiments rolled up into one:

• contacts for Firefox, synced with Google etc

We figured that having working code would be a good way of finding out whether anyone has a use for syncing contacts that are local to Firefox.

Would porting the Zindus addon to Firefox be a good idea?  Why would it be useful?

• non-Thunderbird sync

We were interested to explore decoupling the addon from the Thunderbird addressbook.

• a better addressbook for Thunderbird

The built-in contact database looks less like the current Thunderbird addressbook and more like the Google and Windows Live addressbooks with contacts, groups and an explicit membership relation between contacts and groups.

This promises:

• a more coherent and extensible model for grouping contacts
• contact properties as JSON for extensibility (lists, relations and tags)
• mailing lists replaced by auto-complete on groups

This is a thought experiment only.  Here’s the official Thunderbird AddressBook Roadmap.

How to install and use

• download the testing release of the addon, unzip it, edit install.rdf, uncomment the firefox stanza, zip it up, and install it into Firefox
• visit Tools/Zindus, enter your account details and select “Sync Now”.
• the contacts.sqllite database lives in the zindus/data subdirectory of your profile folder.
• There’s no UI to view or edit the contacts but you can use the SQLite Manager addon to read and write the database.

So…

If you’d like syncable Firefox contacts, now’s the time to speak up!

How it works

After enabling the option, the next sync creates addressbooks that correspond to Google groups.

The synced Google groups

All Google groups are synced.  Google Apps users don’t see Coworkers, Family, Friends - consistent with gmail.

Contacts that aren’t members of a Google group appear in the ‘Suggested Contacts’ addressbook.

Add, rename and delete

This is a full two-way sync, so add, rename or delete an addressbook and the next sync will alter the corresponding group at Google.

You can change a contact’s Google group membership by:

• drag and drop between zindus/yourname@gmail.com#groupname addressbooks or
• deleting it from the corresponding zindus/yourname@gmail.com#groupname addressbook.

To entirely delete a contact, delete it from Personal Address Book, zindus/yourname@gmail.com or zindus/yourname@gmail.com#Suggested Contacts.

Limitations

• don’t edit a contact in two different addressbooks.  The addon chooses a winner and propagates it.
• don’t drag and drop if you use Thunderbird 2, Postbox 1.x or SpiceBird 0.7.x.
  Addressbook limitations in these clients cause a drag+drop to appear to the addon as a delete+add (instead of a move) - which creates duplicates.
• don’t drag and drop between Personal Address Book or zindus/yourname@gmail.com and zindus/yourname@gmail.com#xxx.  You’ll have to ‘Reset’ to get back into sync.

Mailing lists

With apologies to the many people who asked for mailing lists, there are reasons we decided the addon should instead sync Google groups with Thunderbird addressbooks.

Enjoy!

If the addon really created duplicates it’d be a serious bug.  Neither of these folk filed a bug report so it’s impossible to know for sure.

But while bugs are always possible, it’s far more likely that these reports reflect a misalignment between expectations and the reality of slow sync.

Even though two contacts might appear to be the same, even a tiny difference (such as a space in a phone number) means that slow sync treats them as entirely different contacts, and one of each appears in the merged set.

The next release of the addon aims to improve transparency during slow sync by explaining:

• what is happening
• why it is happening
• as it is happening

Transparency promotes trust.

Thanks to @zigurd and @ceonyc for the tweets that prompted these reflections.

Happy syncing!