If you are visiting this page because you encountered an error in the addon and clicked on a link, you’ve stumbled across Google Contacts API bug 2649.

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.

Photo sync is finally here!

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.

If you’re visiting this page because you clicked on a link in the addon, you’ve encountered a race condition in the Google Contacts API. The bug has been reported to Google: bug 2531.

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If the addon reports an assertion failure on line:

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

then you have encountered google bug 1915.
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The addon now syncs Google Groups with Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Postbox and Spicebird addressbooks.  The feature is available in release 0.8.15 and later.
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If you’re visiting this page because you clicked on a link in the addon, you’ve encountered Google GData bug 997.
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The zindus addon now uses version 2 of the Google Contacts API, which enables two new features:
* include/ignore of Suggested Contacts; and
* duplicate contacts.

Where Version 1 of Google’s Contacts API required users to de-duplicate contacts before establishing sync, Version 2 has no such requirement.

This allows the zindus addon to establish sync with Google immediately.  The dialog that enforced Google’s no-duplicate rule remains only to fix empty contacts.    Contact de-duplication can happen later or not at all.

These features are currently in testing, and will be in the 0.8.6 release.

Congratulations to the engineering talent at Google - great work!

When you email someone for the first time, Google creates a Suggested Contact for you.

The addon lets you include or ignore such contacts when you sync with Thunderbird.

By default, Suggested Contacts are included.

If you establish sync including Suggested Contacts, then later decide you don’t want Suggested Contacts, change the setting to Ignore. The next sync is a slow sync, in which the addon deletes Suggested Contacts from your Thunderbird addressbook.  Your addressbook is left with non-Suggested Contacts.

Change the setting back to Include to get Suggested Contacts back into Thunderbird.  Easy!

Configuring sync with Google is easy.  Select an addressbook to sync with Google, and choose:

• Personal Address Book if you want contacts auto-added by Thunderbird to appear in Google.  You’ll have one set of contacts.
• zindus/yourname@gmail.com if you want to manage your Google contacts separately from other contacts.

When you first sync an addressbook, you may encounter Google’s rules for contacts:

• an email address can only appear in one contact
• no empty contacts

These rules are enforced in Gmail’s contact interface and to sync with Google, your Thunderbird addressbook must comply with them too. (more…)

Today’s testing release introduces a feature to sync postal addresses between Thunderbird and Google.

An earlier blog entry on postal addresses began by noting the underlying difficulty of syncing Thunderbird and Google postal addresses because:

• Thunderbird structures a postal address into several fields: street, city, state, postcode and country; whereas
• Google has one free-format “postal address” field

Here’s how the postal address sync feature works.
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