Introduction

I began the gnome gmail notifier project after I found no suitable notifier for gmail under the gnome desktop in linux. The application parses the ATOM 0.3 feed provided by google mail services and informs the user with a notification bubble when he or she has new messages waiting.

Installing from Subversion

To install the notifier on your gnome system, do the following:

• Ensure the required development libraries are installed. (below)
• Checkout the latest subversion snapshot:

svn co http://gnome-gmail-notifier.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ gnome-gmail-notifier-read-only

• Configure the build environment:

./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr

• Build the sources:

make

• Install the built binaries:

sudo make install

Installing from Source

To install the notifier on your gnome system, do the following:

• Ensure you have the required development libraries installed:
• libgnome >= 2.14.0
• libgnomeui >= 2.14.0
• libnotify >= 0.4.3 (or patched 0.4.2)
• libsoup >= 2.4.0
• glib >= 2.6.0
• gtk >= 2.10.0
• libxml2 >= 2.6.20
• libglade >= 2.6.0
• gstreamer >= 0.10.0
• gnome-keyring >= 0.4.2
• Download the latest source package.

wget http://gnome-gmail-notifier.googlecode.com/files/gnome-gmail-notifier-X.X.X.tar.bz2

• Unpack the tarball.

tar xvjf gnome-gmail-notifier-X.X.X.tar.bz2

• Enter the project directory.

cd gnome-gmail-notifier-X.X.X/

• Configure the source code. (preferred method)

./configure --prefix=/usr

• Compile with:

make

• Install with:

sudo make install

• Run using the Gnome run dialog (Alt+F2):

gnome-gmail-notifier

Using the notifier

When running, the notifier displays a mail icon in your system tray panel. If the icon has no green or red indicator, then you have no mail. If the icon has a green indicator, you have new messages. If the indicator is red, the notifier failed to connect to your gmail account. When checking for new mail, the indicator will become blue for a short moment.

To check for messages again, right-click the icon and select Check Mail. Changing notifier preferences such as update interval and account username/password can be done by right-clicking the icon and selecting Preferences. You can check out the About menu item for program version and website info, and close the notifier using the Close menu item. To open your gmail inbox in a browser, left-click the tray icon. (The notifier will not open a browser if it cannot download the inbox feed from google, or if you do not have a browser installed.)

Proxy support

The notifier decides whether or not to use a proxy server based on the system-wide GNOME proxy settings. To set your GNOME proxy settings, run 'gnome-network-preferences' and set your proxy host and port there. It is recommended that you set the 'Secure HTTP proxy' and corresponding port as well, as the notifier uses SSL to download the Gmail ATOM feed.

Automatic startup

If you'd like your gnome session to automatically start the notifier every time you log in, run gnome-session-properties, click on the 'Starup Programs' tab, and add gnome-gmail-notifier to the list of programs.