WAP on Nokia 6600 - problems

[trung]

Hi,

I 'm lookign for comments from those who use wap.fastmail.fm to check their emails via a mobile phone.

I use Nokia 6600, on 02 GPRS connection. I used to be able to use WAP happily until someone decided to change something. I'm able to see the new user interface but not able to access subfolders or some emails. I either get no response from clicking into links (eg. click "change folder" link) or when trying to view some emails I get "Services: Unable to perform operation" message.

Other annoying things include:

1) I have to always input username and password whereas in the past I only had to do it once.

2) When you send an email the recipient gets additional redundant info like:

X-Originating-IP: [193.113.235.169]

X-Mailer: pofHQ wapMAIL 1.4beta3

Message-Id: <20041018150631.B069551808E@ext3.fastmail.fm>

______________________________________________________
This e-mail was sent using the FastMail.FM WAP service
from a Nokia6600/1.0 (3.49.1) SymbianOS/7.0s Series60/2.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0 browser.

I know that WAP interface is experimental but would like to hear from other users if they have encountered similar issues. This will help me decide whether it is my phone/network or the WAP implementation at Fastmail.

Thank you in advance for input.

Regards,
Trung

[trung]

Folks,

So there aren't any people using WAP with Nokia phones around?

Come on, just say Yes if wap.fastmail.fm works 100% for you and No if it doesn't and briefly say if you have the same problem as me.

Thanks

Trung

[ppetru]

I'm using the WAP service quite often, Nokia 3510i with GPRS service from Connex (Mobifon Romania). It works fairly well (for me it's more useful than the old wap.fastmail.fm, which wasn't working at all in its last days), with a couple issues:

1) I also have to input the user/pass every time, which is somewhat annoying. My phone has a wallet service which saves some of the typing, but it's still annoying.

2) I too get the originating IP header (with the IP address of my WAP gateway) and the mailer header, and also the huge signature:

This e-mail was sent using the FastMail.FM WAP service
from a Nokia3510i/1.0 (04.44) Profile/MIDP-1.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0 browser.

I didn't know about this (as I never sent email from WAP to myself until now ) but it looks very unprofessional (I have an enhanced account) and annoying. If anyone from FM is listening, please fix this.

3) I have noticed that I can't read certain emails (text only, of course) but I didn't yet have time to track down the problem and see which exact combination causes problems.

4) The change folder link works for me with no problems.


Petru

[brong]

Wow, I'm sorry to see that there have been problems with Nokias. I've used my 6230 with no problems.

My wife has a 6610, so I'll try the interface with that when I get home tonight.

I've removed the tagline at the end, but to retain the information it gave, I've added it to the headers as follows:

-$headers .= "X-Mailer: $PRODUCT $VERSION\r\n";
+$headers .= "X-Mailer: $PRODUCT $VERSION ($HTTP_USER_AGENT)\r\n";
+$headers .= "X-WAP-Service: $S_SERVICE\r\n";

So as you can see, the User Agent (web browser) you used it now in the X-Mailer header, and the service name (FastMail.FM) has a header of its own as well.

Addressing your issues, ppetru:

1) Yes, I know. The code base isn't very well designed for adding cookies, but I think I can see how to do it. This does suck, and will be fixed.

2) Footer fixed. The IP is still in there to help prevent abuse, though in the alternative it could put your username in. There has to be something in there to provide an audit trail.

The wap interface doens't have access to the FM database (for a variety of security related reasons, we don't run PHP on our primary servers, and this tool is currently written in php)

3) Can you please give more information - I haven't been able to recreate this problem. Especially, if there's a message you could forward to me, brong@fastmail.fm, which doesn't work through wap.

4) I suspect this may depend on the phone being used.

[Jeremy Howard]

Originally posted by brong
2) Footer fixed. The IP is still in there to help prevent abuse, though in the alternative it could put your username in. There has to be something in there to provide an audit trail.

Actually we'd never put your username in headers for your privacy - at some point we will however add the 'X-Sasl-enc' header like we do with email through the main web interface, and through our SMTP server.

[brong]

Good news! I've got the Authenticated SMTP working, so you now no longer even have your IP address stored in the outgoing message, just the X-SASL-Enc header.

I've also stipped the other headers that weren't needed, so your privacy through WAP is the same as everywhere else now.

I've also fixed another bug with the system, where after sending an email it would think the current folder was <yourusername>@fastmail.fm rather than an actual folder, and various things would break (I think this is where the 'all messages missing' bug came from). I don't understand the underlying cause - it appears that setting a variable 'From' in a wap form causes it to overwrite the variable 'F' as well - seriously. What a crock. At least with Opera.

Still, renaming 'From' to 'XFrom' (used once) was easier than fixing the naming of 'F', so I did that. Works fine in Opera now.

Unsolved issues:
* would be nice to have a persistent cookie/autologin
* some mails not displaying correctly for some users
* some phones unable to 'click' buttons.

[trung]

Thank you so much for your reply and comments, both to ppetru and the fastmail.fm crew. I am currently away and cannot test the changes made to the WAP interface but I appreciate quick response/fixes from Fastmail.

With the regards to "unsolved issues" that brong mentioned I believe they would still be valid to me. If you can get hold of a Nokia Series 60 phone, ie. 6600, 7610, or even 7650 perhaps you could test if changing folders/reading emails works for you. 6230, 6610 and 3510i are Series 40 phones and may have a slightly different implementation of the WAP browser.

Above all thank you for looking into this. I know that this may not be high priority item for fastmail but I truly feel happy now that my problems are dealt with swiftly.

Trung
PS. If only Fastmail could do email clustering into conversations (like Gmail) I would be gobsmacked.

[davidbstanley]

I have had occasional problems accessing some emails on my SE T68i. It would give an error message saying there was an error on the page. I also had some problems changing folders but that was working last time I tried. I am not in a GPRS area at the moment but will have a good play when I get back.

There is a way of entering your user ID and password through the URL. It should be http://wap.fastmail.fm/?U=userid&P=password&F=INBOX

This will take you straight to the inbox folder.

[haiki]

I have a Nokia 6610, and I'm having similar problems to those experienced by Trung.
There are some mails I cannot open; i get a "Response Unknown" message and are returned to the main index. In addition, i only have access to my main Inbox.. if i use the 'Change Folder' link, i am taken to a page where only Inbox is listed, in addition to a 'Submit'-link. If i click the latter i get this error message: "Warning: Couldn't open stream {mail.messagingengine.com:143}INBOX in/var/www/wap2/index.phpon line20 ERROR: Can't connect:"

Other than that I'm pretty pleased to be able to check (almost all) my mails on my phone

nils

[davidbstanley]

Clicking on the Inbox link should bring up your folder list. But yes, the change folder option is broken for me too on my T68i. It works in Opera though.

"Warning: Couldn't open stream {mail.messagingengine.com:143}INBOX.Sent Items in/var/www/wap2/index.php on line 20 ERROR: Can't connect:"

[haiki]

ahh, now I understand.. I can indeed see my folder list.. thanks for that! still getting the error message though... hope that will get fixed soon

nils

[brong]

I've rewritten everythinig that used 'U', 'P' and 'F' internally to use 'Username', 'Password' and 'Folder' instead, which should hopefully make that part of the code a lot safer!

You can still pass 'U', 'P' and 'F' in the URL (thanks davidbstanley), and they'll be converted automatically.

In the process, I've fixed a couple of other little things that I noticed. I doubt they'll affect the problems you've had with things not showing though! Oh - it will fix the change folder problem - because I've moved that code into a separate file and fixed it up a bit.

One thing I have noticed is that the code attempts to display things in the characterset claimed by the message - which might not work on all phones.

Please let me know if anything isn't as you expect!

Bron.

[davidbstanley]

Originally posted by brong
......Oh - it will fix the change folder problem - because I've moved that code into a separate file and fixed it up a bit.
Bron.

Oh no it wont Still the same error here - I assume you have uploaded the changes?

[brong]

Doh!

Yes, I have already uploaded the changes.

I really don't like the way WAP handles these things much. I'm going to find myself a reference on the internet and have a good read about how WAP encodes things in forms and see if there's another way to do it.

[brong]

Could you please try again? I've now updated the code to explicitly specify the Username and Password at that point rather than relying on the phone to remember the previous values.

Thanks,

Bron.