User Feedback :: cursor sticks/freezes...escape key release.



Quote (marc66thomas @ Feb. 15 2007,16:41)
Lucky13
I appreciate your attention to this subject.
I am a fan of Dillo with some reservations (bookmarks are tough for me to figure out. using Dillos system and preferences are a bit slim.)
Sylpheed was the deal killer. Although it is small and nimble, as you said. It didn't handle HTML mail or attachments well. After spending an hour on how to send myself a file; (a zipped HTML file of my bookmarks) I decided to punt on Slypheed.

Opera was my known quanity choice, the add on of the chat was 270k more. I'll stick with Opera untill I start having other additional issues. (hitting the escape key not being a fatal flaw.

Again thank you for the suggestions.   I may look for an alternate mail app. that can handle incomming HTML mail and better recognize attachments of any sort.

What issue did you have with Dillo's bookmarks? I think the preferences in Dillo are pretty straightforward, too. What problem did you have with that?

As far as Sylpheed goes, it handles HTML mail and other attachments just fine. Most "HTML mail" comes with the main text body and an HTML attachment. This is how Sylpheed and other (mostly console) MUAs treat HTML; I have KMail set up on this computer to look at text and treat HTML and images as attachments because that's the most secure way to handle them (especially from spam/unknown sources). I only open such attachments from sources I can identify -- never by default (I've fixed that default error in Opera, Thunderbird, Seamonkey on my other computers and all are now configured to show only text until I'm sure I want to open attachments).

I realize other MUAs give preference to HTML over text and display everything unless told otherwise. I think that's a very bad default and an unsafe practice to be in because of the number of threats related to HTML and images. Yes, you can get malware from text-based e-mail; the threat from HTML-mail, though, increases exponentially because of the number of exploits that take advantage of HTML parsers as soon as mail is open. It can be something relatively minor, such as reporting your e-mail address as valid to the sender (which only means you could receive more spam as a result). It could be something a lot more serious even with Linux. It's just bad practice to open an HTML attachment BY DEFAULT like that.

You can configure Sylpheed to open the HTML attachment in Dillo or any other browser just as you can configure other applications to handle any other attachment. Once you have it configured (and applied) as you want, all you do is open it to look at the attachments and middle click (or right and left click if using laptop touchpad) on the HTML attachment or whatever attachment you have and it opens in Dillo or another handler app you've set up. You can use any browser for the HTML, xzgv for image attachments, xmms for audio/video attachments, etc. Sylpheed works VERY well like that, whether you use the applications that come with DSL or add others through the repository or apt-get. It only takes a few minutes to configure and you can change it on the fly if you find other applications to handle your attachments.

I wouldn't let that be a "deal breaker," especially given the amount of memory your computer has in relation to the applications you want to run, but it is your computer and you're free to hit the escape key as often as you have to. Hopefully that's the most of your worries with how you choose to view your e-mail. Just remember the escape key doesn't stop snooping, virii, or other unsolicited actions occurring from promiscuously viewing HMTL code in e-mails by default.

See this page, this one, this one (more Windows oriented, but the principles are the same), or do your own search for HTML e-mail and security.
One more thing. The Sylpheed manual is available online and contains directions to handle MIME types with helper applications. You can also look [here for more information.

I don't know how many programs you've installed from the repository or apt-get and you'd want to set up to handle attachments, but here are the basic handler applications you should associate with various types per the programs that come with DSL:

image/*; xzgv %s
application/pdf; xpdf %s
text/html; dillo %s
audio/*; xmms %s
video/mpeg; xmms %s

Etc. The pattern is very simple and you can set all that up in Sylpheed's configuration menu or in the sylpheedrc file manually.

If you choose to open files with console apps, remember to set up an aterm in the handler command (e.g., if you want to open HTML in lynx instead of dillo you would use aterm -T lynx -e lynx %s).

original here.