bunnyhero dev » Bookmarklets

Deeper into the rabbit hole: Gmail scripting part 3!

bunnyhero — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:01:59 +0000

I have discovered that the “reply” editing area is not always named “hc_0” or “ta_0“. No, the number following the underscore can be other numbers — it seems to correspond to the index of message in the conversation.

This gets more complex, because I forgot that more than one reply editing area can be open at the same time! And they can be of different types (i.e. rich or plain text)! So now not only do we have to find the editing area(s), we have to determine which one has the current focus. So far, I’ve not been able to find a way to determine what element has the focus, using JavaScript, on a page I didn’t create. Hmmm…!

More later…

Scripting Gmail part 2

bunnyhero — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 23:25:54 +0000

UPDATE: Haha, alas this does not work all the time. Yep. See my next post… sigh.

After some time poking around with Firebug, here’s the updated code that also handles the “reply” text-editing area!

/* gmail seems to cycle between frames 'v1', 'v2' and 'v3'. try all */
var success = false;
var editorNames = [ 'hc_compose', 'ta_compose', 'hc_0', 'ta_0' ];
for (var i=1; i<=3 && !success; i++)
{
    /* if the frame is offscreen, it's not the active composing window */
    /* do this with a DOM element */
    var fe = top.main.document.getElementById('v'+i);
    if (fe && fe.offsetLeft >= 0)
    {
        /* the element name of the edit box could be one of 4 values, depending
           on rich text/plain text, as well as whether replying or composing.
           try them all. */
        var d = top.main.frames["v"+i].document; /* note we have to use oldschool frames[] syntax */
        var ed = null;
        for (var j=0; j<editorNames.length; j++)
        {
            ed = d.getElementById(editorNames[j]);
            if (ed != null)
            {
                break;
            }
        }
 
        if (ed != null)
        {
            /* found it! rich text? or plain? */
            switch (ed.nodeName)
            {
                case "TEXTAREA":
                {
                    /* plain text */
                    /* do something with 'ed' */
                    success = true;
                    break;
                }
 
                case "IFRAME":
                {
                    /* rich text */
                    /* do something with 'ed' */
                    ed.contentDocument.execCommand( /* something something */ );
                    success = true;
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Phew!

Scripting Gmail with Bookmarklets

bunnyhero — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 19:45:32 +0000

I am working on some bookmarklets for Gmail. I discovered that targetting any specific element in the Gmail window is a bit tricky, due to Google’s interesting use of frames.

It turns out that Gmail swaps between using frames named “v1″ and “v2″ to display the main content (at least in Firefox). If I had to guess, I’d mumble something about history and the back button and maybe cacheing :P

Anyway: here is how I find the text-editing area (it’ll be either a textarea or an iframe, depending on whether the user is using rich formatting or not):

/* gmail seems to swap between frames 'v1' and 'v2'. try both */
var success = false;
for (var i=1; i<=2 && !success; i++) {
    var ta = top.main.frames["v"+i].document.getElementById("hc_compose");
    if (ta) {
        /* do something with ta, for example: */
        ta.contentDocument.execCommand(/* something something */);
        success = true;
    }
    else {
        //  try getting the plain text area
        ta = top.main.frames["v"+i].document.getElementById("ta_compose");
        if (ta) {
            /* do something with ta here, a textarea element */
            success = true;
        }
    }
}

I’m certain this could be done more cleanly, but you get the idea. Share and enjoy!

UPDATE: This currently doesn’t work for a “reply” editing area. I will (I hope) update the snippet to cover that case, too.

UPDATE 2: Sorry, this doesn’t work consistently. I should test more before posting :P I am now finding a frame called “v3″. Perhaps Gmail increments this continuously? In any case, I am leaving this post up for research purposes.

UPDATE 3: Got it working reliably (I think). See the fixed version!