csvy's dashboard

I think things auto-expire after 30 days

The problem is that I do need to get the startup initial folders--since it also provides the unread count which I need to display next to the folder

I've gotten the application "working" again, but unfortunately, from what I can see, the API is nearly unusable now for a mobile device. It has been heavily optimized for a desktop browser to require the minimum number of HTTP requests. What this means is that the file size of the JSON has increased significantly.

A mobile device is very very different than the desktop client. On the desktop client, the folders, mailboxes, and email are all visible at once, so the API sends them at once. On the mobile application, however, these are each of separate pages. From what I can tell, there is no longer any way to ask for the each of these sets of data separately (which is great for the desktop client, and speeds it up significantly, but horrible for the mobile client, which has an extremely slow and unreliable data connection).

At the moment the application is now unusably slow on a bad connection. Does anyone on the OI Team know if the new API has a way to request specific arrays without all the other information that is useless to the device?

Back again... Although the API has changed enough that nothing works anymore :) Time for a rewrite

Just got back from Google IO (Google's developer conference) and learned a bunch of new stuff about Android (and got a new development device for testing) so I will be able to improve much. Unfortunately I keep having to postpone working on this application to spend time on my paid app, since I plan to release this one for free (mainly because I can't imagine the market share of OtherInbox users with a G1 being all that large :P). It will be released though, and I've been using it myself for a while now.

Things have been delayed by Cupcake (Android 1.5) is rolling out
I had to divert all my efforts to making my existing application compatible and now I can move back to OtherInbox again. I plan to rewrite the threading/communication framework I implemented, using new features available that make it more elegant and stable.

I have been dog-fooding the app now for the last week to make sure that the beta release is suitable for consumption. I'm hesitant to release it, because I am still getting semi-frequent (enough that it is noticeable) time-out errors, no matter the connection (3g, edge, or wifi). The problem is that I'm unsure whether they are as a result of my application or they are the same server-side time-out errors (502, etc) that I get sometimes on my laptop (and they are somehow more frequent on the mobile device because it doesn't try multiple times like a browser?). I really want to get to the bottom of those before I put it out, but rest assured, I am still working on this.

This could not be implemented with a Gmail Labs features. Gmail Labs features are only available for creation by Google. The only way to get your own content into Google labs is with a custom XML-based widget which would go in the sidebar--you can not go beyond that. To do something like what you desire would require a browser plugin (it would actually be pretty easy to write for Firefox based on Greasemonkey, which Gmail has an API for). This provides much more power (and access to all your messages), however, it would only work on the machine(s) you installed the extension/plugin on, whereas Google Labs automatically follows you to whatever computer you use.

Everything for v1 (doesn't yet include compose/reply/forward/etc) is working except the showing the correct buttons depending on what folder you are in. If anyone is interested, I'll post a beta once I fix those buttons.

I've also been getting 504 Gateway timeout errors

I just finished an Alpha build which I have published to my website.

Based on my limited testing, I believe it works completely for reading emails.
However, it is currently READ-ONLY. No data is posted back to OtherInbox (since I am still waiting on some API details). Emails will not be marked and read when you open them, and any button that is not read-only will produce an "Unimplemented!" popup. Nevertheless, it should be completely usable at this point for reading emails.

If you would like, please download and try it out, and let me know whether it works. Any feedback would be appreciated. Nothing is set in stone.

Notes: I seemed to be getting a lot of timeout connection errors while using it, but I have also been receiving many on my desktop as well. Let me know if you have connection issues--I'm not positive whether they are due to my app, my connection, or OtherInbox.

Installation Instructions:
-----------------------------------
1. From the Home screen on your device, press the physical menu button
2. Press "Settings" (on screen)
3. Scroll down and press "Applications"
4. Click to check "Unknown Sources (Allow install of non-Market applications)"
5. Return to the Home screen (press the physical home button)

From here you have two choices:
+ Download the file from my website on your G1 using WIFI (due to a bug in the browser, it will not download correctly over T-Mobile EDGE, not sure about 3G)
+ Download the file from my website on your computer, then copy it to your device either over USB, or onto the devices SD Card

Either way, the file is located at http://www.souvey.com/oi-alpha.apk

Note: the final version will go in the Android Market, so installation will be easy

Again, please let me know how it goes!

In your post, you mentioned that the PUTs (manifested as POSTs) go to " messages/batch_update" or mailboxes/batch_update. However, based on how the web-based version works, it appears as though everything goes to /batch_update. Is this the new advanced API (that has deprecated the one you sent, possibly?). Pressing the mark as unread button, for examples, sends the following parameters to /batch_update: advanced, authenticity_token, folder_updated_at, mailbox_id, mailbox_updated_at, message_ids, read, tag, user_updated_at, & version. Are these really all needed (particularly authenticity_token & version, which I have ignored thus far)?

Thanks!

P.S. Is there the API I described above for the getting just the folders?

Is there a json method using the advanced API that only returns a list of Folders (but not all the additional stuff like type=startup). Because panels are all on separate screens on the mobile app, using type=startup will make it much slower, not faster (since it doens't need all that information right away). I was previously just using /refresh, which returns such a list, but you said that the non-advanced API is deprecated. Just appending advanced (/refresh?advanced=true) results in an internal server error. Is there a "type" parameter to list the folders? Thanks!

Progress update (for anyone following): I just rewrote my java OI JSON client to be faster and have nicer error handling. The login code is all rewritten and runs much much more quickly (although it is still slow when you get your password incorrect, which I don't think I will fix). I also fixed rotation, so that rotating the device works cleanly throughout the app (and doesn't cause any issues with downloading data, which is now isolated in its own thread Finally, I did some general UI tweaks and cleanup, including a much better looking landscape view on the login page (picture included below--portrait version is still about the same as screenshot further up, but with a few tweaks--larger button, etc)

It's coming together... :)

Is there a way to change the title? I just noticed that I typoed the error as 520 instead of 502 in the title (although I put it correctly in the message body).

Internet has been on and off all day here (someone cut the fiber lines to my city in the middle of the night), so I'll have to let you know how it works out tomorrow.

The sprites are located here: https://beta.otherinbox.com/app/OI/en... (they are the 5 lower down that are used for Inbox, Saved, Deleted, Sent, Blocked). If there really aren't originaly vectors, I could convert them myself, but if you are wanting to help, I certainly would appreciate it.

Were the icons not originally in vector format?

Someone managed to cut all of the fiber optic cables running to South Bay (in California), so my city is currently without internet, phone (even 991! yikes!), and cell reception. I'm spending the night at a friend's right now who is not in the affected area (thus me being able to reply to this), but I won't be able to finish this tonight as I intended (since my phone doesn't have any cell reception still). Hopefully the problem will be fixed by tomorrow (they claim they will have the cables spliced back together by tonight). Someone is SO getting fired for taking down an entire city :)

I do remember one question I wasn't sure about from last night (though I didn't get much of a chance to look into it, it's probably easier just to ask). How are emails marked as read (both the Mark All As Read, and reading individual emails)?

I got 502s off and on all over the place last night. The login page failed to load once, at another point, the css failed to load. Also, many of the AJAX requests failed (I have firebug so I could tell it was the same issue).

Oh, I was going to ask. Is anyone on the OtherInbox team willing to send me some just slightly higher resolution images of the mailbox icons (Inbox, Trash, Saved, etc). The high density of the G1 screen means they have to be very small at their current resolution (or very blurry).

I'm going to bed for the night, but I have finished viewing the folder list, mailbox list, and message list (all correctly linked to OtherInbox's server). I'm heading off to bed, and I'll try and finish the rest tomorrow.