Getting started with Gmail Plugin development

I would like to get into Plugin development using the Gmail API and as such I would like to ask those who already have experience in it a few questions.

1. What language / languages should I be fa开发者_开发百科miliar with? I'm not familiar with Python, PHP, or JavaScript. Will I need to pick up on these?

2. What level of control do I have on what my plugin can do? Can I for example change the interface or add shortcuts or RSS feeds as a sidebar?

I know a lot of the examples mentioned already exist but I would like to try my own hand at it.

Peter posted a solid list of the official Gmail APIs.

On the other hand, most of the major plugins that you may have heard about are browser plugins that just modify the page source directly, even though there's no official API for it. There used to be a GreaseMonkey API that was a good starting point, but that wasn't supported and no longer works. Best place to start is with a copy of Chrome, creating a content-injection plugin that works on the Gmail page.

Happy to provide some further details if you can clarify what you're going for since I went through this myself a few months back.