21st Century Address Book?

[OldMole]

Are there any plans to update the Address Book, or are there any extensions that do this?

TB's address book is quite dated. For instance, some people have multiple email addresses, mobile phones, etc. They work out of two offices and therefore have two (or more) "Work" addresses, in addition to their "Home." Does anyone still use Chat? Etc., etc., etc. The current address book, which has been around for as long as I can remember using TB, is very rigid in its structure. In today's world, we need something that's less rigid.

For instance, Apple's Contacts app on my iMac (Mac OS Yosemite) allows 3 phone numbers but gives 10 categories + a custom category with which to label them.

Any hope of getting something better?

[mgagnonlv]

I don't know about improvements, but there are two potential extensions that might help you.

1. gContactSync allows you to use your contacts on Gmail as if it were a local address book. I find it useful because that way, I can use the same address book on my phone and my computer. But you can also use its added features for local contacts.
It allows 7 phone numbers which can be labelled from the same list of labels Google offers (labelling is more flexible than with the standard address book, but it still misses a "toll free" label, for instance), as well as 4 email addresses. Unfortunately, the two extra email addresses are in a special tab along with a list of "People" related to the individual.
I use it regularly and find it reliable. Read the instructions before using your Gmail address book.

2. CardBook replaces your entire address book with a completely new one with lots of extra features. I tried it long time ago (back at version 8 or 10; now they are at version 23.3) and didn't like it. It didn't lose anything, it's just that it went too far away from the Thunderbird address book which mostly suits me. So try it and see if it suits you.


P.S. Before doing anything fancy, please take a copy of your address book out of your profile folder (just in case) and export its content in a CSV file.

[tanstaafl]

Mike Conley had been working on a complete redesign of the address book but the project was canceled due to lack of resources. Later on there was some speculation on the tb-planning mailing list about possibly integrating the CardBook add-on but nothing seems to have happened.

One of the messages on that mailing list mentioned: "With TB57.0b1 the gContactsSync extension is broken. Upon opening the address book window, it neither shows any address books nor contacts. https://imgur.com/E8NeZ8x"

The MoreFunctionsForAddressBook add-on at https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html adds several more fields plus some useful features such as being able to make auto-complete settings account specific.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Sharing_address_books , it mentions several ways to access your google contacts.

[wsmwk]

Mike Conley had been working on a complete redesign of the address book but the project was canceled due to lack of resources. Later on there was some speculation on the tb-planning mailing list about possibly integrating the CardBook add-on but nothing seems to have happened.

One of the messages on that mailing list mentioned: "With TB57.0b1 the gContactsSync extension is broken. Upon opening the address book window, it neither shows any address books nor contacts. https://imgur.com/E8NeZ8x"

http://pirules.org/forum/index.php/topi ... f8#msg2360