CheckGmail 1.10.1 review

CheckGmail is an alternative Gmail Notifier for Linux and other *nix systems

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Owen Marshall

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CheckGmail is an alternative Gmail Notifier for Linux and other *nix systems. CheckGmail project is fast, secure and uses minimal bandwidth via the use of Atom feeds.

CheckGmail is a system tray application that checks a Gmail account for new mail. When new mail is present the tray icon changes, an optional animated popup is displayed and a tooltip displays the number and details of new messages. Configuration is GUI-based and the application is designed to be simple, elegant and unobtrusive.

There are several other Gmail Notifier alternatives around (see the links section below), but all use a cumbersome method of gathering Gmail account information that basically involves loading the login page, logging in just as a web-browser would, then using Gmail's javascript interface to mine the relevant data.

The advantage of this approach is that you can grab any information that you can see on the Gmail web interface. The disadvantage is that it uses heaps of bandwidth and time when typically all you want to know is whether there's new mail in your account. In comparison, the use of Atom feeds by CheckGmail is simple, straightforward and fast while still providing the details of any new mail in your inbox.

The other reason for CheckGmail is security - no password information should ever be stored in plain text, yet this is exactly what at least one popular alternative does. CheckGmail provides the option of either encrypting the saved password information or - for maximum security - re-entering your password each time the application is run.

If you decide to save the password, it is encrypted using a passphrase generated from machine-unique information (the eth0 MAC address and/or uname system information). Encrypting the password prevents both casual reading of plain text passwords on your machine, but more importantly allows the CheckGmail config file in your home directory to be

Requirements:
Gtk2-perl
Gtk2-TrayIcon
libwww-perl
Crypt-SSLeay
Crypt-Simple
XML-Simple

What's New in This Release:
New feature: The number of messages can be sent to scripts run on mail arrival by using %m in the command
Slight change in translation handling code: the version of the user translations is now checked against the program version, and if the user translations are up-to-date language keys can be modified even if they exist in the default preferences
BUGFIX: If version 1.10 was started when no network connection was present, checkgmail got caught in an infinite loop when trying to log in, with predictably disasterous consequences ... :( This has been fixed by adding a 30 sec sleep period between trying to connect
BUGFIX: Messages with tags in the header weren't displayed correctly if the tag wasn't compatible with Pango
BUGFIX: Mail order sort changed so that newest messages are displayed first
BUGFIX: Really fixed proxy support this time!
New Translation: Japanese (Satoshi Tanabe)
New Translation: Romanian (Marius Mihai)
Updated translations