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Sending EmailThis is not your typical "how to send email from my VB app" question, but it touches on that. I am aware of the various ways to send email. For example, there's the MAPI controls, CDO, even Winsock. The problem I am facing is how to determine what method must be used, on any given computer, to send an email. Allow me to elaborate a bit. After years of being out of the shareware business, I'm getting back into it. I would like users to be able to submit their shareware registration via email (at this time, I don't want users to have to go to a web site to register; I want them to be able to send a registration email from the program itself). For Win2000/XP users, I use the "Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 Library". However, that requires SMTP. If the user uses web-based email (such as they might with a yahoo or hotmail email account), then (as far as I know) an SMTP account won't be configured and CDO can't be used. If CDO isn't an option (because SMTP is not configured) then there's the mailto: protocol. But this poses problems too. For one, the body of an email message can't always be included, or may be incomplete, due to the client program not supporting it or just because it's too much to pass to ShellExecute. As sort of a final resort, a small text file can be saved where the user can easily get to it (for example, to their Desktop). This text file would have the registration information and the user just needs to either attach that text file to an email, or open it and then copy and paste it into an email. I'm sure there are developers out there who have faced similar problems in sending email. How do all of you deal with the issue of the various ways of being able to send email from your programs? Particularly when you're dealing with users for whom you have NO idea what they use for sending email? Thanks for any input. -- Mike Microsoft MVP Visual Basic One possible solution is to create a registration Form in your VB program
that the user completes. Once completed, you can post or send the registration information to your website via APIs or the Winsock control behind-the-scenes so the user never sees the actual transmission of the data. This would just require that the user is connected somehow to the internet. Sending the information to your website could be done in a number of ways (Web Services, Query String, etc.) Just an idea! Ben Mike -
One of my programs collects information via a registration wizard, and then posts it to a CGI script on my web site which parses it and shoots the mail to me from there. Any sensitive info in encrypted. So far it's worked out great for me (after a LOT of trial and error) and I'm happy with it. I don't know if you have much experience with PERL or if you have that kind of access to your cgi-bin...but if you'd like to explore that option, I'd be more than happy to discuss it with you at length and give you my PERL scripts to start with. They are fairly simple and read a lot like C code. After everything you've helped me with, it's the least I can do. Let me know. :) - Kev I use PBemail
Show quoteHide quote "MikeD" <nob***@nowhere.edu> wrote in message news:eUGRdc%23kFHA.3656@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl... > Hey everybody, > > This is not your typical "how to send email from my VB app" question, but > it touches on that. I am aware of the various ways to send email. For > example, there's the MAPI controls, CDO, even Winsock. > > The problem I am facing is how to determine what method must be used, on > any given computer, to send an email. Allow me to elaborate a bit. After > years of being out of the shareware business, I'm getting back into it. I > would like users to be able to submit their shareware registration via > email (at this time, I don't want users to have to go to a web site to > register; I want them to be able to send a registration email from the > program itself). > > For Win2000/XP users, I use the "Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 Library". > However, that requires SMTP. If the user uses web-based email (such as > they might with a yahoo or hotmail email account), then (as far as I know) > an SMTP account won't be configured and CDO can't be used. If CDO isn't an > option (because SMTP is not configured) then there's the mailto: protocol. > But this poses problems too. For one, the body of an email message can't > always be included, or may be incomplete, due to the client program not > supporting it or just because it's too much to pass to ShellExecute. As > sort of a final resort, a small text file can be saved where the user can > easily get to it (for example, to their Desktop). This text file would > have the registration information and the user just needs to either attach > that text file to an email, or open it and then copy and paste it into an > email. > > I'm sure there are developers out there who have faced similar problems in > sending email. How do all of you deal with the issue of the various ways > of being able to send email from your programs? Particularly when you're > dealing with users for whom you have NO idea what they use for sending > email? > > Thanks for any input. > > -- > Mike > Microsoft MVP Visual Basic > > 
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