Email Plugin

[colin]

Grand, I'll be home in a few hours so I'll stick it up somewhere for download. I think we'll need a huge TV to read this or else a better choice of font. I'm guessing my wife will suggest changing the font rather than let me buy a big tv. Some basic info,

Use the config/setup to put in your username/account and pop3 server (only pop3 support available). Yes, security is thrown clean out the window here as the password is stored as plain text in the config.xml file but we can figure that out at a later stage whether we encrypt and store or else passwords need to be entered by remote or keybaord.

Then just click on Email and hopefully this should show your email. It does not remove email from your account, well it shouldn't anyway, it just displays it.

There are 3 windows "From", "Subject" and "Email contents". There is also an about button. Left and right arrow keys move from window to window. Up and down arrow keys move you through the "From" window and scroll up and down in the "Email content".

Only text is shown, attachments are ignored at the minute. As I said earlier, performance sucks as every action requires contact with the email server. This was the easiest way to do things for a prototype.

Stay tuned,

Colin.

[colin]

Ok, try this out:

Email Plugin

and see what happens. Unzip email01b.zip in gbpvr directory and the files should be put in the correct place. See how it goes,

cheers,
Colin.

[sub]

I'll test it when I get home. The firewall gets in the way here - making it difficult to get to the pop server.

I've seen the basic screen without any email. Interesting screen layout

I'm glad someone else is sharing my pain by having to decide what a screen should like and how it to make it useable from a remote etc. Its much more difficult than you'd think.

It looks like a good start.

I'll provide some more feedback when I've had a chance to view some email through it.

[sub]

When I try it at home with my correct server/user/password settings I get "Unable to read data from the transport connections'. Any thoughts?

[colin]

Hmm, not at the minute. Try this

MainForm

and put this in the same location as the Mail.dll (think its in the gbpvr directory) and try it. This is the example that comes with the Maill library. If this can connect then I'm doing something wrong, otherwise we may have to write the whole thing ourselves.

And yes, told you layout was crap. I think for viewing an email we may have to display a full window to be able to read the email.

Oh, and I'll also update the plugin to use the debugging api and start logging lots of crap to see if there are any clues.

Cheers,
Colin.

Ok, put up an Emaill.dll with logging in it

Email.dll

drop this into your plugins directory and overwrite the older one. This uses Logging.Verbose and be careful it does write out your username/password to the log file so be careful if you pass log files onto other people.

[nkh]

Hi, it works here! the only thing that I can't get working is scrolling through the email itself.. When the "email window" is highlighted nothing happens when I press up / down on the remote.

Actually, the same thing happens in the "subject window"... the only window I can use up / down in is the "from window".

[colin]

Hi nkh,

Excellent, at least you can connect to your email server and get mail. the rest of the functionality is a bit lacking Did you try this on the PC or on the MVP or both? Did it look nasty on the TV?

the Subject window does not have any scrolling. I didn't think this was required, but jus to be annoying i put it in the list of windows to move to .

As for the email content window, if this is selected and you push the "Up" arrow does this scroll the contents? I have have screwed this bit up as I was getting confused with to get the text to fit into a window. I probably don't have the remote up arrow enabled, probablty something stupid like that.

I'll see if i can sort out the arrow keys and remove the subject window from the highlight list.

Also any thoughts on how the layout should look? I want to make the layout as skinable as possible so people can change the look to what ever they want and not blame me for it looking pants!

Thanks for trying this out, I appreciate the feedback

Cheers,
Colin.

[nkh]

ah, sorry, the scrolling through the email does work from the remote... I just didn't think of pressing 'up' to scroll down I can't scroll up (pressing the down button on the remote) though.

It actually looks alright on my tv (29" 4:3, through the tv-out on my graphics card)... at leased I can read the text but using a sans serif font would probably improve the readability. Maybe the font + size could be set in the skin file (if you make one )

Maybe the 'About' button could be a bit narrower so it could be placed at the left of the content window? That way the content window could be a bit higher, and there'd still be room for more buttons under the About button.

I'd also like to see a bit more info in the content window, like:

[Date - time] - [From]
[Topic]
--
[Content of email]

[nkh]

oh, and, maybe you should think of only downloading a certin size of the email. I tried to view an email with some attached files and I thought GBpvr had frozen untill I saw the heavy activity on the net

[colin]

Quote[/b] ]ah, sorry, the scrolling through the email does work from the remote... I just didn't think of pressing 'up' to scroll down I can't scroll up (pressing the down button on the remote) though.

I noticed the myself this morning. I guess i didn't have enough beer in me when I coded that bit.

Quote[/b] ]It actually looks alright on my tv (29" 4:3, through the tv-out on my graphics card)... at leased I can read the text but using a sans serif font would probably improve the readability. Maybe the font + size could be set in the skin file (if you make one

cool, so one of the requirements will be at least a 29" TV then I'll try and get more TV friendly fonts and make it a bit bigger.

Quote[/b] ]Maybe the 'About' button could be a bit narrower so it could be placed at the left of the content window? That way the content window could be a bit higher, and there'd still be room for more buttons under the About button.

Yeah I tried creating a smaller button image but I could not get GBPVR to accept it so i just stuck this one in. I think sub has a new API where you can create buttons now. If not i'll see about generating them inline instead and make them a better size.

Quote[/b] ]
I'd also like to see a bit more info in the content window, like:

[Date - time] - [From]
[Topic]
--
[Content of email]

Yeah so would I, but we'll just have to figure out what sort of real estate we have to play with. Increasing the font eats up more room.

I thought of putting up a new window with the email content, though again something to work out as we go along.

Quote[/b] ]oh, and, maybe you should think of only downloading a certin size of the email. I tried to view an email with some attached files and I thought GBpvr had frozen untill I saw the heavy activity on the net

Good point, that would currently kill an MVP box. There should be a way of doing that.

So i'll shuffle things about and fix up the buttons for now, then I'll be working on a proper design for this beastie.

Thanks again for testing this out.

Colin.