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Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

inboxsdk.com

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Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#21

Post by slackstation »

You give the code in a .js file that you include in a browser plugin but, you don't state clearly whether this is or is not an open source project. The .js file has no license in it either.

File: https://www.inboxsdk.com/build/inboxsdk.js

Then I see the github page: https://github.com/InboxSDK/

There is no InboxSDK project but, just two example chrome plugins using the inboxSDK.

All the trappings and mechanics of open source without the actual source and an actual open source license. Are you guys just testing this to see if you can productize it? Or are you going to go all the way and open source this?

Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#22

Post by alooPotato »

xpressyoo wrote: post #15
alooPotato wrote: post #5

Founder of Streak (YC S11) here - we built the InboxSDK using all of the work we've put into making Streak work great inside of Gmail. Happy to answer any questions about the SDK.

Great job and initiative! Gmelius Founder here. A few questions: i) Are you planning to make the whole implementation Open Source? ii) Say I wish to adopt and use your SDK in my current Gmail/Inbox extensions (>100K daily users), may I expect the implementation of a fixed upper limit on the number of transmissions in the coming months (which could endanger the reliability of my service for my users)? iii) While the S…

i) Our long term plan is to do so, but not in the immediate term.

ii) The SDK loads a static JS file so we aren't really worried about having a lot of users requesting that. We're hosting the SDK on appengine so I wouldn't expect any caps on users or anything like that. Dropbox has a ~500K weekly actives (as you can see from the chrome webstore: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dropbox-for-gmail-...) using it and I expect that to grow.

iii) can you describe the use case a bit more? Specifically are you looking to get the set of filters or add new ones or both? On the preferences side, are you looking to add your own? We have this functionality in Streak but haven't yet ported it over to the SDK (but will soon)

Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#23

Post by snowmaker »

alooPotato wrote: post #5

Founder of Streak (YC S11) here - we built the InboxSDK using all of the work we've put into making Streak work great inside of Gmail. Happy to answer any questions about the SDK.

Wow, this is amazing! Thank you for doing this! I honestly believe this is could be the most impactful innovation to come to the email space in years.

InboxSDK was obviously a ton of work. What is your business model for it?

Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#24

Post by wslh »

If you are interested in this kind of hacks you can't miss Add-In-Express [1] and my company's Windows Live Mail, Windows Mail, and Outlook Express APIs that created SDKs around closed source products for more than 10 years.

[1] https://www.add-in-express.com/

Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#26

Post by squiggy22 »

alooPotato wrote: post #14
squiggy22 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What prevents Google closing the door on this?

Well, nothing really. But thats true for almost anything. We think you can trust the platform because we're fundamentally making Gmail better and more valuable to Google's users. There are a handful of successful businesses (like Streak and others) already built on top of gmail and have been for years. These venture backed companies already trust their business to be on top of Gmail. We're just making the process of…

A well rounded answer, but I'll pass for now. If Google really believed in your ethos of making the software more valuable via third parties, their platform wouldn't require dom hacks that could break without notice. i.e. they'd open up their own APIs to make building these sorts of apps themselves.

I absolutely commend you for what you are doing, I just wouldn't be willing as a developer to dip my toes in that particular water to spend the time developing something they could rip apart and break.

As a side note, the documentation page is broken on Mac Safari 8 on OSX Javascript error:

TypeError: undefined is not a function (evaluating 'reference.endsWith('()')')

Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#27

Post by flawless »

Streak's InboxSDK is the missing link to augmenting gmail's functionality. Gmail is a rich product that always seems to be changing silently. The Streak team does a fantastic job maintaining the SDK so that their changes automatically get pulled in, no need for us to release a new version of the extension.

We used InboxSDK to create part of our DocSend Chrome extension. Our power users who are in gmail 24/7 can't live without it. Thanks to Streak for helping us enable our user base and keep happy customers happy! :)

Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#28

Post by Avalaxy »

Can anyone explain how this is different from Google's Gmail Contextual Gadgerts? https://developers.google.com/gmail/contextual_gadgets#what_...

I'm looking to build a plugin that can automatically send a mail back under specific conditions and allows follow-ups, but I'm not sure what tech I should use.

Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#29

Post by alooPotato »

kartikt wrote: post #25
matthall28 wrote: post #2

We've been building our Gmail app over at http://CloseFox.com with InboxSDK and have really been enjoying it! Definitely a lot better than using gmail.js

Creator of gmail.js here. Can confirm

Gmail.js is pretty great too.

We're trying to take a slightly more higher level approach but there's def still a few things we're missing that gmail.js does have.

Re: Show HN: InboxSDK by Streak (YC S11) – Build Apps inside Gmail

#30

Post by dkokelley »

squiggy22 wrote: post #26
alooPotato wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nothing really. But thats true for almost anything. We think you can trust the platform because we're fundamentally making Gmail better and more valuable to Google's users. There are a handful of successful businesses (like Streak and others) already built on top of gmail and have been for years. These venture backed companies already trust their business to be on top of Gmail. We're just making the process of…

A well rounded answer, but I'll pass for now. If Google really believed in your ethos of making the software more valuable via third parties, their platform wouldn't require dom hacks that could break without notice. i.e. they'd open up their own APIs to make building these sorts of apps themselves. I absolutely commend you for what you are doing, I just wouldn't be willing as a developer to dip my toes in that parti…

Sure Google could break this (maliciously or otherwise), but would you rather have to keep up with their changes on your own, or build something that works on InboxSDK, and let them play cat-and-mouse with the Inbox DOM? Worst case in the latter scenario is that a feature is down for as long as it takes for a fix to be released.
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