Hi!
I am a newbie here so forgive my - may be stupid - questions :

I would like to use "checking e-mails" dock module for my Gmail account. How to configure that ?

Having the same configuration problem also with "input" and "output connections" modules.
Right now they don`t show anything (RAM and CPU meter - they do - without any configuration !).

To configure the modules, just right click on them and select 'Settings' from the context menu (e.g.; to configure the Email Checker module, you should right click on the Email Checker module and select 'Email Checker Settings' from the context menu that pops up).

As for monitoring your Gmail account, unfortunately Google changed something in early 2010 which prevents the Winstep Email Checker from working with it. I suggest you read the FAQs here.

As for the Net In and Out Modules, right click on one of them and select the NIC (Network Interface Card) you want them to monitor.

There are many apps right now that can successfully monitor Gmail and report if new mail is available: two that I am currently using are Digsby & Informer (yahoo widget).

I would prefer to use Nexus to monitor my Gmail account so that I can cut down on the apps I have running.

If those guys can do it I know that you can too --

Jorge had a module that was working correctly. Gmail changed it without explaining why or what. He decided that he wasn't going to keep updating the module just for Gmail every time they changed it as he had already a working system (Why change something that is working fine?)

Or at least that is what I gathered from his comments....

I agree that it can be frustrating to have something working and then Gmail changes stuff (without saying why or how) and it doesn't work any more.

However, Jorge really has only two choices:

1) Fix it so that it now works again (there are literally dozens of apps that can successfully monitor Gmail right now including many widgets and gadgets so it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out what to do) and make your users happy
2) Don't fix it and leave your users upset (trust me, there are a lot of Gmail users)

I really don't think that somebody providing a service or product has the luxury of not updating something because they are upset that an interface changed (if that is the case here)

No, that's not the case, although I can understand why Kutagh thought it might be, lol

I had already looked at this problem to see if it was something I could solve quickly. Gmail started refusing connections more and less about the time they started being accused of having a vulnerability in which SSL connections could be hijacked.

The fact that the connection was immediately terminated by Gmail on the initial client-hello phase, as well as some other info I read on their documentation pages after an exhautive search, suggested one of two things:

1. Either they no longer accepted SSL v2.0 connections or
2. They now only accept POP3 connections from known (code signed) Email clients.

At that stage I stopped looking further into this, as, at the moment, I have other, higher-priority, features that need to be implemented too. I realized that fixing this issue would take more effort than I am currently able to put into it.

The Winstep Email Checker was, AFAIK, the first (and for a long time the only) Email widget able to monitor Gmail accounts due to its implementation of the SSL protocol.

I am a gmail user, I'm not upset. My university provides their mail through gmail, I got two other gmail accounts (which also fetch mails from other accounts through POP3) and I use the gmail checker in FireFox. Works for me, I don't need 5 different methods to find out whether I got mails, if I want to know I got new mail or not I simply open my browser

Anyway Jorge might fix it in a couple months. So far he has been making tremendous progress with other stuff (the skinning program he promised still has to be released, I think that the skinning program is one of the higher priorities as it is another incentive for the community to be active)

Ok, looked into this some more and I now at least know the exact cause of the problem: the Winstep email module only supports SSL v2 encryption, and, unfortunately, v2 had serious vulnerabilities which started being exploited in late 2009. This caused all email providers requiring SSL encrypted connections (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail) to drop support for it in favor of the more secure SSL v3 / TSL protocols.

Adding SSL v3 support is certainly not an easy task, therefore I don't expect to be able to implement it any time soon.

Hi Jorge, any plan for modifying the email checker module now?

Yeah, unfortunately you're not going to like this: I removed SSL support entirely (doesn't make sense to have a checkbox to something nobody else supports anymore). At least for now.

As stated above, adding TSL/SSL v3 is not a trivial thing.