Shush, shush, gather close, I have to whisper this… we’ve been a little quiet on the blog for a few months. This is an opportune time to explain ourselves… we’ve actually been working on 3 different prototype products to add to the family. One of them is very close to fruition, and more on that soon, but the important thing to know is this has been a really creative period and we’ve been hammering away every day 🙂

But while we were in our cave typing away, we felt rippling vibrations that shook the walls and demanded we look up from our screens… the explosion? New Gmail.

We’ve been around long enough to see every incarnation of Gmail, and by our count this is V3, and the biggest upgrade since 2009.

And it’s pretty darn lovely.

But we didn’t initially see it that way. No no no, the short version is it’s required us to throw out and replace about 50% of ActiveInbox’s codebase. 10s of 1000s of lines of code. 10 years of work. And we only had a few weeks to actually achieve that. 3am has been, if not exactly a friend, a regular acquaintance recently.

But we’re (just about) there. And the amazing thing is I really love the impact its had. In throwing out all that code, we threw out the rotten wood, all the clutter in the loft, and freed up so much space for the future. Once the dust has settled – and there will be a period of unexpected quibbles I’m sure – ActiveInbox will be faster & more stable than it could ever have been before. And as a bonus, we’ll be able to develop new features quicker.

So what’s coming up?

Gmail is currently rolling out 3 separate versions of itself (which is hellishly complex for us, but so it goes): 1 is old Gmail, 1 looks like old Gmail but has their new data system, and 1 is new Gmail.

We’ve just published ActiveInbox 7.0.4. It’ll work with all of them, but you might notice a few features are missing.

In the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing back

  • Firefox support
  • Send Later
  • The Action Bar when you’re composing or replying
  • Move Nexters above buttons in conversations
  • The ability to update emails from the inbox and search results

Because the new system has given us new powers, in the next month we’ll introduce some new features

  • We’ll be able to make ActiveInbox load a lot faster, with a new caching technique
  • Some experiments to semi-automate ActiveInbox, so it can help you track things you’re waiting on, suggest folders, and suggest emails you might have missed.

Of course, as we’ve had to work around the clock to release this in time, I expect there may be some gremlins hiding, so if you have any questions or problems, we’ve got a mega thread prepared to discuss them: https://getsatisfaction.com/activeinbox/topics/new-gmail-new-aib-v7-error-reporting-here-only-please

  

This was written by Andy Mitchell