What is the general method of creating a “contact us” page in your app with “send message” to e-mail?

Question

I'm developing a desktop application with AIR.

I wanted to have a contact window with a message box and a send button, in case some user would like to send me quick message about the application, or event a "report" function when an exception occurs.

For this, I opened an email account, put its details (user/pass/smtp server) in the designated code, and when you press the send button it actually sends the e-mail from that account.

Do you think it is the right solution, is there another one ?? I might have trouble with it in the future ?

Answer 1

Apart from the fact that it may be a great learning experience to write mail socket connection code in Actionscript, is there a particular reason that you want to keep the actual send functionality inside of the app?

Personally, I would create a gateway script (php, .net, jsp, whatever) on a server & have the app contact said script, hand over the information, and let IT send the message. That way: a.) you're not compiling your credentials in with the executable, and b.) You're not stuck with having to maintain the same mailserver connection credentials... if for some reason you have to change your username/password or if your mailserver host changes, you'll have a bevy of users out there with incorrect connection strings.