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!

Spicebird is a mozilla-derived mail client from Synovel, which bundles Spicebird with their enterprise messaging collaboration product, CollabSuite.

Update 2009-07-12. This feature has moved out of testing into production (0.8.11).  Thanks to everyone who provided feedback!

Postbox is a mozilla-derived mail client with loads of features.  The company behind the client, Postbox Inc is a San Francsico-based startup founded by former Mozilla employees.

The Zindus addon currently uses the same Address Book backend for Postbox and Thunderbird, so if you read ‘Thunderbird’ in the FAQ, it’ll probably apply to Postbox too.

If you’ve encountered this bug, it means the addon is out of sync with Google.

Solution

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

More Information

When a contact is deleted at Google, the Google Contacts API is supposed to retain a placeholder for the deleted contact for 30 days.

You encounter this bug when Google’s API fails to supply that placeholder. In plain english: the addon loses sync when Google’s API gives it false information.

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

For technical details, see this thread on the Google Contacts developers list.

Are you likely to encounter it again? Probably not. The bug isn’t that common. But this is the #1 bug report we receive about the addon, so if you do encounter it, you now know what it’s about and what to do!

The Zindus addon mostly works in Eudora - with one caveat.

If you download the latest Eudora release and it is version 8.0.0b5 then under the covers it is actually Thunderbird 3.0b1pre.  The trouble is that the Zindus addon isn’t supported for pre-releases for reasons outlined in these comments.

Careful readers might ask why the addon installs into Thunderbird pre-releases at all.  The reason is that mozilla’s installation manifests don’t support the fine-grained control needed to allow beta 1 but disallow beta1-pre.

The Zindus addon checks to see whether it’s installed in a pre-release Thunderbird and if so, a friendly error message appears.  Eudora 8.0.0b5 users can bypass this check by tweaking the preference described under the “thunderbird 3″ text at the roadmap.  To set the preference, use the config editor under “Tools/Options/Advanced/General/Config Editor”.

With this safety-check bypassed, the addon will run in your pre-release Eudora.  But as with all pre-releases there’s always the possibility of an interface mismatch.  Interface mismatch failures are usually reported in the Tools/Error Console.  If you want to experiment with the latest version of the addon in your pre-release Thunderbird, have this window open on your first sync or two.

The addon version most likely to work in a pre-release Eudora is the one compatible with the Thunderbird release closest to the one your Eudora is based on.  For Eudora 8.0.0b5 that is Thunderbird 3.0b1.  A search for “Thunderbird 3″ in the release notes shows that version 0.8.5 was compatible with Tb3 3.0b1.  0.8.7 happens to work too.

This hassle for Eudora users should disappear entirely once Thunderbird 3 is released and Eudora is based on a stable version of Thunderbird.