HTML PHP JavaScript Whatever to Check Gmail Unread Count

Question

How do all these browser plugins, notifiers, etc. check your gmail unread count?

I'm trying to write a Safari Extension (which happens to be in javascript but I don't think it matters) and I can't figure out how to parse the Gmail atom feed (https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom) to get the unread count.

Thanks,

Answer 1

Check Google API.

http://code.google.com/intl/cs/apis/ajax/

Namely http://code.google.com/intl/cs/apis/ajaxfeeds/

Answer 2

From within a Safari extension, you should be able to do cross-domain XMLHttpRequest and use the responseXML property to access the DOM. However, you need to configure the extension to be able to access Google's servers. See this question.