Hi All,
I just wanted to clear up a misunderstanding some people may have about how my program works.
This is not a HTML email viewer. I know that seems like a bit of a let down, but in my opinion this is actually not so bad...Read on and I'll explain why.
Firstly, I'll lay this out on the table: The BlackBerry cannot (through standard email) receive HTML email. Before your BlackBerry even gets its hands on your email it passes through RIMs servers which detect HTML email and strip it all out. A sad state of affairs in my opinion.
What you do get left with however is image links, html links and otherwise something that looks like a bit of a train wreck.
A couple of years ago a company called Reqwireless came out with a full HTML email viewer for the BlackBerry. The way this worked was to have your email actually redirected through to their servers and then your email is downloaded.
This is bad (and dangerous in my opinion) for the following reasons:
1) Security. Your potentially sensitive business email is forwarded to an unknown third-party server with who knows what kind of security in place. I know I wouldn't want that happening to my sensitive emails.
2) Painful setup for the user. To get this to work, the user would have to setup forwarding of all their emails to Reqwireless' server.
3) Support. Reqwireless found this one out the hard way. Managing everyone's unique email requirements is an extremely hard thing to do. They eventually took their product off the market because the support costs involved became too prohibitive.
4) When it's gone, it's GONE. Because your email is going through their server, if their server is down, no email for you.
5) It didn't integrate with the default email program.
The above is my understanding of how Reqwireless' product worked. If anyone wants to correct me feel free to jump in.
So what does my product do?
It works with what it is given. In general, my aim was to make email reading a good experience not the pain it is now:
- When it detects image links in the email, it goes off and retrieves those images (completely configurable too - you can turn images on and off, etc.). And it caches them for instant viewing later, etc.
- It cleans up email addresses and hyperlinks so they are still usable, but short, concise, pleasant to look at.
- It tries to detect replied to parts in an email (not an exact science) and handle them nicely.
- It makes the email look good (nice anti-aliased fonts, etc) not the ugly chunk of text it looks like now.
- It integrates with the existing email viewer
So not only does my program fix emails which were once HTML, it improves the look and feel of ALL of your emails.
Once I did this, I was amazed by how dramatic the change in appearance was (and how much easier it was to read email!) that I forgot all about this HTML business
Pretty nifty in my opinion
Finally, another teaser screenshot
Teaser
Cheers,
Zainny.
A Revolution in BlackBerry Email is Here! -
05-28-2007, 02:21 AM
05-28-2007, 03:22 AM
