Email and Web on the Nook

As I mentioned last time, I wanted to be able to use my new Nook to check email.  The Nook comes with an email program.  I wasn’t able to connect easily to my Baylor email account so I gave up.  I’m not sure whether it was something on the Nook side or the Baylor side, but I think it’s because my Baylor account is an Exchange account and that was not an option in the email settings as it would be in regular Android (if I interpreted the Baylor help page correctly).  However, connecting to my Yahoo account was simple although it did take a while to sync the first time.  I linked it as IMAP rather than POP because I wanted my email to stay in the cloud since the Nook will not be my primary email reader.  I decided not to bother trying to connect my gMail accounts even though you can use the mail program with more than one account.  I actually found it easier to use the web browser to read my email.  Exchange, Yahoo, and gMail all have mobile versions that automatically load with the option to go to full web version.  Yahoo kept on asking me to download their Android app; but because the Nook runs on it’s own version of Android, I decided that the app probably wouldn’t work.

The default homepage for the web browser is the Nook home page, but you can change that in the settings.  And it’s easy enough to navigate to other pages.  One slightly annoying feature is that you can’t have multiple tabs open at the same time.  You can have multiple pages open, but it’s a three-touch process to switch pages (open the menu, select new or other windows, select the page you want).  I find it easier to look at the pages in landscape, and there is a setting to make that a hard default.  There is also a setting that allows you to toggle between tablet and desktop browser modes.  I’m assuming the tablet mode goes to mobile websites when possible.  You can pretty much customize the settings (cookies, save passwords, forms, etc) the way you would with a desktop browser.

One thing I was disappointed with was that I couldn’t edit my blog in WordPress using the visual editor (which is one reason why I’m posting this 3 weeks late), but I just realized I can use the html editor.  I was, however, pleasantly surprised that Blackboard seemed to work fine, and I was able to post to discussion boards and download material.  It did take me awhile to find where the downloads went (go to library–>my stuff–>my files–>my downloads).

Another thing I haven’t figure out how to do yet is double click so I can highlight a whole word (like my password) when I type it in wrong.  Anybody have any suggestions?

Next time let’s see if we figure out how to download library books.