[Ubiquity] email (to contact) treated as part of message

This appears to be because the parser for the email command looks for 'to contact' where contact is pulled from the the gmail contact list export when ubiquity starts. Unfortunately it appears that security prevents the underlying ajaxGet() action from sending the necessary authentication for the XMLHttpRequest of https://mail.google.com/mail/contacts...
(You'll find that call in chrome/content/utils.js)
Consequently google return a 404 error (not 401 - dunno why) which then triggers the default callback function which in turns returns an empty contact list. Hence, 'to contact' is never matched and everything is grabbed as message text by the parser.

If you look in 'chrome/content/nlparser/en/nountypes.js' and find 'function getGmailContacts( callback )', you will see

function() {
// probably not logged in - fail gracefully
callback({});
}

If you amend that to:

function() {
// probably not logged in - fail gracefully
var contacts = {};
contacts["TEST"] = "NOT@WORKING";
callback(contacts);
}

You will now have a contact 'TEST' and typing 'email to TEST' will try to send an email to 'NOT@WORKING'

I can't think of a workaround at the moment, unless anyone knows of a way to allow the XMLHttpRequest to send auth/cookies...

Yes - the failure to send cookies is certainly the problem. I modified my 'Utils.AjaxGet' function to add in all the necessary google.com cookies with a series of commands like:

request.setRequestHeader("Cookie", "A=B");

There are about 20 - but then it works... obviously not a work around, but it does at least prove the source of problem. I guess from that javascript context cookies are blocked by security... that's a deeper firefox 3 problem/feature I guess.

Yah - I had the same problem, and disabling Better Gmail allowed Ubiquity to find email addresses.

I have seen this problem when emailing something to an address that was not in my Contacts. Emailing to a contact's name works fine for me.

in case this helps:

Seeing the same on FF 3.0.1 on OS X 10.5.4. Am NOT using Better Gmail; only Firebug 1.2.0 and ubiquity 0.1 installed. I'm using GMail via Google Apps for Domains, and via https. Ubiquity can access the mail interface, just not contacts. As expected, command "get-email-address" does not work either.

I had the same problem running Ubiquity Firefox/3.0.1 Ubuntu 8.10
and it seemed to resolve itself after using the get-email-address command.
On the other hand the get-email-address seams to more often than not get turned into a google search (this might just be me doing some thing wrong)

Exact same issue here.

FF3.0.1 on Vista Ultimate
I have Better Gmail installed and disabling it did not help me.

I have a variety of other extensions, including Firebug, Web Dev toolbar, Adblock Plus, Tab Mix Plus (beta release).

Using get-email-address did not help either. After typing that command ubiquity would switch to default web search mode.

I have a similar issue. How can I email to an address not on my contact list?

Same issue here.
FF 3.0.1
Windows XP
No Greasemonkey. No Better Gmail.
I do have Gmail notifiier but experienced the same issue when disabled.

I turned off all extensions and still had the problem, then I remembered that I don't allow third party cookies. When i turned those back on, it worked. That's too bad because I want third party cookies turned off.

Another vote for "I have this problem", Firefox 3.0.1, no greasemonkey or better gmail.

it seems to be a problem when you are set to using Gmails beta version. When you use the older version (classic) it works fine.

edit:
I forgot to include that I'm currently using

FF3.0.1
Ubuntu 8.04.1
a bunch of extensions and some custom ubiquity commands

edit again:

after restart am back to the original problem.switched back to Gmail beta.

edit edit edit:

yeah turning on 3rd party cookies fixes the issue. from maxpower's comments

yep; enabling third party cookies does fix the issue (although contact selection is still quirky)

Another confirmation here that enabling third-party cookies allows Ubiquity to access my gmail contacts. However, I do not want to allow third-party cookies, is there a workaround? I didn't see anything obvious in FF options to allow an exception.

there is actually a way to add exceptions in FF3, don't know about the mac versions but windows and linux has it. am experimenting with it right now. will post if I figure out what cookies I need to allow.

edit:
yep, enabling or allowing google.com's cookies seems to work. in FF linux just go to edit >> preferences >>privacy tab >> accept cookies from sites then just add google.com with allow setting. in FF windows the preferences is called options and is under the tools menu.you could turn off third-party cookies after this.

I added "mail.google.com" to my cookie exception [allow for session] list, while keeping third party cookies disabled, and it now works for me. I also always use https. I did notice that not all of my contacts are displaying [even ones with unique names and email addresses], but I am getting some results. It seems to function, but is still buggy.

this problem still exists in 0.1.6!

no contacts visible - everything i type is taken as an email message...

I am using forced https:// (Better Gmail) and no cookie restriction i know of. Greasefire, and a few Gmail extensions (RTM, themes)

Vista Basic - firefox 3.0.6
Stylish enabled

OK BUT IN THE future YOU MAY WANT TO CHECK your CAPS LOCK KEY!!!!!

I have been having the same problem until i choose to login to GMail by NOT using the "remember me" function, but typing in the whole "username@gmail.com" and "password", i also accepted that Firefox remembered my password but i do not know if that had any effect. Hope this helps someone.

Hopefully this behavior is improved in 0.5, which will be released this week.