I've been looking into adding an "extension" for gmail, this is for an application at work, basically we want to somehow integrate some options (buttons), somewhere contextual to the email that's being viewed currently.
Our users, will then be able to install extension, and the extension will establish the authorisation aspect (not sure how this is done yet) with our application.
I've so far looked into two options, not sure if I'm on the right track:
- Chrome extension, that then uses gmail.js (some third party library on github), and use some jquery to search the DOM to insert a button into the reply/delete toolbar.
I understand that this would be more straight forward but would have issues with it breaking if page layout changes, or class names changes. And would also require uses to be using chrome (which is something we are fine about)
- Create a gmail contextual gadget add-on, that sits at the bottom of the email, although, I'm not sure if this contextual gadget will appear at the end of the main thread of an email or inside each individual email and will require expanding?
Also correct me if I'm wrong, but are gmail contextual gadgets limited to users with Google Apps subscription in their company? I.e. we have to subscribe to google apps in our domain and deploy it on the google apps marketplace, and similarly also have the users who want to install this gadget to also be using google apps?
Thank for everyones help in advance.