New Plugin: Email Reader (Alpha preview)

[Remco]

Attached is v2 of the Email plugin.
I added skinning-support and a configuration panel. Account-settings are now stored in config.xml instead of email.xml.

! If your're upgrading from v1; you have to go to the configuration panel and store the settings with "OK".



Features:

• reading email of pop3-servers
  
• Multi-account
  
• MIME-parsing
  
• Converting HTML to plain-text if neccessary
  
• Fully skinnable
  
• Configuration panel
  

TODO:

• Decoding UTF-8 / base64 messages
  
• Clean up the logging
  
• Adding mouse-click-support
  
• Showing HTML-messages
  
• Showing attachments
  
• Encrypting passwords
  
• Adding a panel for the main-menu
  
• Adding support for IMAP mailservers.
  

Installation:
After downloading and unzipping emailpluginv01.zip; go to the configuration panel and enter your mail accounts.

Manual:
To read mail; first select the mail-account, press enter/OK, select the mail to read and press enter/OK. For scrolling through a mail, press fast-forward (PageDown) of rewind (PageUp).

History:
v2:
- added skinning
- added configuration panel
- account-settings are stored in config.xml

v1:
- initial release

[reboot]

VERY cool! Downloading now.
gonna skin it for my Bluebubbles skin

[Remco]

VERY cool! Downloading now.
gonna skin it for my Bluebubbles skin

Sorry; haven't had time to implement advanced skinning. Only skinning option is the background-image. I'm going to work on it...

[Tulex]

Wow, very nice. Seems to work for me. Now if I can just figure out how to get lcd plugin to tell me I have mail.....

[reboot]

Once you get the buttons working, I can skin that bit. Did the background already

[Gunr]

Quick question?

Does it download the messages? Or can you configure it to leave a copy on the server so I can download them later in outlook if I want?

Thanks

Gunr

[HenkH]

Nice job Remco! I also had the idea to write such a plugin, but when I heard you (and some other guy) were developing one I turned my attention to other plugins.

You've probably have plenty of ideas to improve the plugin, but maybe you'll find some of my remarks useful:

• You don't need to supply the background.jpg and thumbs.db (both in the skin directories) in your distribution.
  
• A settings dialog in the GB-PVR config application would be nice (it isn't difficult to write).
  
• Since you're not using a button bar on the left side of the screen (it only contains the 'Main menu' button) you can get rid of it, giving more horizontal space on the screen.
  
• The sender/subject box is too narrow. Maybe you can get rid of the accounts-box: only show them in a pop-up at startup and when pressing a special key.
  
• If you have a wider sender/subject box you might add the data/time of the message to it.
  
• Is there an automatic recheck of the mailboxes?
  

@Gunr: the plugin seems to leave the messages on the server, so you can later retrieve them with other programs.

[Gunr]

HenkH thanks for thereply. That is cool!

So my next question could it be configured to access the outlook express database? Then it wouldn't even have to go online outlook express could retrieve and the plugin could just display on GBPVR.

Sorry if this is a stupid question. I don't really do any programming so don't have any experience as to how hard any of this is!

Thanks tho great program and great plugins by all the programmers.

Gunr

[reven]

cool plugin, just prefer the mediaportal email design. its similar to my videos, where on the side you have the menu options (main menu, attachments, reply, forward etc), and on the right (middle) you have a list of email accounts.
eg
my email account 1_______________________________________[2 new messages]
my email account 2_______________________________________[0 new messages]
and pushing enter on them takes you to the inbox, or another list with multiple folders "Inbox", "Sent Items", "Saved", "Deleted" etc. and to return you push enter on a "parent" item. Just a better layout that would work well if you decide to extend it.
eg if you push enter on a email. the menu changes to options like
"Delete"
"Reply"
"Forward"
"Attachments" (which changes the list to display the attachments, possible allowing you to open them there, eg playing a video, viewing a picture).

and on the right you have the message, using the scrollingtextbox from the widget library allowing pg up/down to move the message up and down.

yeah thats a major change, but the ground work is working and thats the hardest part (the actual email client part).

also how does it deal with attachments? can you run a virus scanner when downloading them ? (i get to many emails with viruses).

[pcostanza]

Nice idea and I know it's in beta but it's not working for me. It opens with 'downloading email' and I can see my mail name and it says 0 messages. I do have messages and I am positive the info is configured correctly.
I did put the plugin into the new Platinum skin.....does that make a difference?
Is it a matter of time before it checks for mail from the servers?
Keep up the good work.
Paul