Week-end hacks are quite often some of the best work you do. Gmail+Growl sure has been for me. Let’s retrace.
September 3: After a bit of idle hacking at the eve of Gmail Notifier’s release (or at least my discovery of its plugin API), Gmail+Growl 1.0 is released. A link is posted to the Growl list, and a comment on MacSlash somewhat later. No further advertising is being done.
September 9: Not a full week afterwards, the work is featured on the Google weblog, the same venue the Gmail Notifier was released.
September 19: Gmail+Growl 1.1 is released. It has customizable notifications and a broken installer. The broken installer is (in what must be one of the better instances of inadvertent comedic timing since “and neither do we”) touted as “less obnoxious”. (A functional installer is reinstated the next day.)
September 28: Gmail+Growl 1.2 is released. It has the ability to show icons out of the Address Book for mails from people you have such icons for.
Well, that’s one end of the stick. Another is the current download count of 5966 - almost 50 downloads each day for the past 124 days, a good result for a very niche product. However, there’s been other things cooking between October and now, and I think the time’s now right to reveal what I’ve been up to.
In December - around ten minutes into my birthday, local time, actually - Chris, the head of the Growl team mails me. And five minutes later, I’ve accepted his proposition. Gmail+Growl is now officially a Growl extra. Not only bundled with Growl, but maintained by fellow Growl programmers, of which I now am one. That was without question one of the best birthday gifts I have ever gotten, however inadvertent.
Also in December, around two weeks later, I finally get in touch with the creator of Gmail Notifier - Greg Miller. Suffice to say that Greg now has a few ideas around which to build the next Gmail Notifier version - if any.
So where does that leave us?
Gmail+Growl will ship in one more version totally on its own. This version will come sooner rather than later and incorporate the number one feature request and actually, the number one duh feature ever - you will be able to open that mail you just received by clicking the Growl notification. At last.
After that one version will come the first Universal Binary; the one that’s shipped with Growl 0.8, which will come out Any Day Now™. (To the best of my knowledge, Gmail+Growl will run flawlessly under Rosetta, as will Gmail Notifier.)
All in all, I couldn’t be happier with how Gmail+Growl has turned out, and the future for it looks extremely bright in the hands of not only me but a bunch of other amazing and friendly people.