Re: Questions and Observations From a New user

[Jim Mayer <jmayer rochester rr com>]

Ok... you're right.  Using Gecko is a bad idea.  I'd still like to be 
able to bring up the configured GNOME browser on the html text.  There 
seem to be a couple of problems with that right now.

(1) As I pointed out before, selecting Open opens with Mozilla instead 
of Galeon, which is my configured browser.

(2) The icons at the bottom of the page don't seem to interpret double 
clicks as an "Open" command.  For one thing, if it is an HTML icon the 
screen switches to the HTML view on the initial mouse down event.

(3) Related to (2), the screen scrolls to the top every time the icon 
is selected.  I would prefer that selecting an icon be a no-op when the 
corresponding screen is already current.

(4) Maybe a shortcut to "open" the first non-text MIME part would 
work.  It could be a menu item when the header line is right-clicked 
and could have a keyboard equivalent (CTL-ALT-DEL?).

-- Jim

On 2001.11.03 06:42 M . Thielker wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2001.11.03 07:57 Jim Mayer wrote:
>> (14) The ability to use the Gecko HTML rendering engine from Mozilla 
>> for high quality, in-line, HTML display would be really slick.
> 
> There are several things to consider when you're thinking about using 
> a "real browser" to render HTML mail:
> - That will enable your email client to, like outlook, access a web 
> site to display email, just like Outlook does. It will allow others 
> to update stats on who's viewing the message, may divulge your email 
> address to 3rd parties or download harmful software.
> - It would cause your dial-up connection with dial on demand set to 
> dial the internet while reading emails offline, if they contain to 
> web hosted images.
> - It would slow down Balsa a lot, because parts of Mozilla would need 
> to be loaded/initialized prior to previewing an HTML mail, just as 
> with Outlook. However, while IE is an integral part of Windows 
> Explorer, and therefore is always loaded anyway, on Linux this is not 
> the case. Loading it takes time that you may not wish to spend when 
> quickly flipping through emails.
> - It introduces an additional security risk if any of the Netscape 
> binaries are installed world-.writable. Another user replacing those 
> binaries with his own could easily run arbitrary software with your 
> user ID.
> 
> When I get HTML mail, I usually only need the plain text to identify 
> what the purpose of the email is. Most HTML email I get is spam, 
> anyway, so after reading the first line or so, it's CTRL-D anyway.
> There is an advertisement letter I get from an online shoe store 
> sometimes, that I _do_ wish to read. It references pictures that are 
> on their web site, but they have thoughtfully provided a link to view 
> the message online as well. That way I do not need to have a full 
> rendering of it in my email client, but launch a browser to view the 
> web page.
> From the web page I have the additional benefit of being able to 
> order directly, so why have a rendering of all the pictures in my 
> email client?
> Most personal communications I receive in HTML format were typed in 
> the default font at the sender's email client anyway, they just 
> heven't turned on the "Send as text" feature, so it gets sent as 
> HTML. Usually a nice letter telling then to please sned future 
> communications as "text only" will help that.
> For all other purposes, I can still launch Mozilla/Netscape on a part 
> I wish to see in full splendor, like HTML greeting cards and such. I 
> don't see a need for the extensive modifications necessary to make 
> this work in Balsa. That would be bloat!
> 
> A note on GTKHTML: On my system, inline images that are contained in 
> the message as separate MIME parts are not always rendered correctly. 
> Usually this happens:
> When I view the mutiparty/mixed with it's embedded multipart/related 
> section's text/plain part selected, I get mutiple panes showing the 
> individual parts, rather than having the picture rendered within the 
> text area at the proper position.
> If the HTML part is selected, I see placeholders in the proper 
> position, I do not see the images. This, of cource, should be fixed.
> 
> Melanie
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