Thursday, February 14, 2008

PopPeeper v3.1: Minor Hiccups

(Updated below -- read that first)

I've long been a fan of PopPeeper, a tiny program that lets you manage your email accounts without having to fire up your email program or surf to your various web mail account sites. You can monitor the arrival of new mail, delete unwanted messages, preview potentially worrisome messages in a sanitized fashion, and so on. As an added line of defense in keeping malware off your Windows machine, it's invaluable. If you're on a slow connection, it's quite handy -- you can postpone downloading giant messages and look at just the shorter, more time-critical, ones.

The new version just became available, and I had to fiddle with it a bit to get the connection to GMail working (again -- it worked in the previous versions). Here's what I learned, in terse form. Let me know if you want any details.

  • Make sure to enable SSL. When you're installing PopPeeper, make sure to check this option -- it's not checked by default. If you've already installed the new version and didn't check this option, it's probably easiest just to re-download and reinstall. That's what I did, and the second time around didn't wipe out my other earlier settings.

  • When you set up your GMail account, the Server Type might be set to "GMail," especially if you let the account creation wizard do its thing. Select the GMail account (in the Normal View mode), do Account -> Edit, and change the Server Type to "POP3." In the dropdown box to the right of this entry, change "No SSL" to "SSL," and make sure that the port is set to 995.

  • I don't use PopPeeper to send mail, but there may be some more fiddling to be done in this area, as well, if you want to use this functionality.

You'll also need to have set up your GMail account to enable POP3 access. Again, ask me if you want details -- either in the Comments or via email.

One other minor thing: Upon installation of the new version, I got a message saying there was a new version available: v3.1.0.3007. I was asked if I wanted to update, I clicked "yes," and I got sent to the appropriate download.com page. However, the version served up, as of this writing, is still v3.1.0.0. PopPeeper's Help -> About shows the same notice and results in the same behavior. Presumably, this will be addressed soon enough, since v3.1 was just posted to download.com today. I'll try to remember to make a note of it when the update really becomes available.


Keywords for Googling fellow sufferers: poppeeper gmail problems, poppeeper can't access gmail, poppeeper can't connect to gmail, poppeeper gmail error, poppeeper gmail unknown error try again later


Update

2008-02-15 06:19

That was fast!

Turns out the problem was that GMail changed its configuration. PopPeeper's internal Message of the Day (from late yesterday, actually):

GMail (webmail) made a change and has been fixed in webmail v3.1.0.1

If you have "Auto-update Webmail plugin" checked (see Help -> About), kill PopPeeper and restart it to get the update. If not, visit this page.

This seems to fix the problem -- I can now access GMail with Server Type GMail (and Server Type POP3 with SSL still works). Good job, PopPeeper People.

Final note: the Help -> About dialog box no longer says that the latest program version is 3.1.0.3007. That's been changed (back) to 3.1.0.0 -- only the Webmail plugin is new (3.1.0.1).

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