Comments on: .Mac webmail interface screws CSS, email marketers

By: Ryan S.

Ryan S. — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 17:27:05 +0000

Co-sign what jack said.

Business reasons aside, outside of preventing XSS exploits (which is solely margin/position tagging), there’s NO reason to mangle CSS as badly as .Mac has done.

Responsible mailers sending multipart-alternative messages anyway, so if you don’t like HTML, your MUA will pick up the text version. Everyone wins.

Interesting update as of this writing (4/10/07):

Gratuitous div is gone, for all intents and purposes. However, the customer wrapper div (id’d with a “messageCanvas” generated value), has a STYLE tag as a subelement. This style defines an id selector which does not match anything in the document. Most browsers behave, and ignore this: Internet Explorer doesn’t (big surprise?). Suggested fix is to apply a wrapper div, or inline line-height/font-size definitions on all text-based elements.

Mangling fonts does not prevent XSS exploits, and it’s asinine to interfere. Another disappointment from Cupertino.

By: jack

jack — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 02:43:53 +0000

It has nothing to do with spamming or marketing; just that .Mac re-renders crap, and that’s a A Bad Thingâ„¢.

It’s Apple’s re-rendering of CSS that’s a problem.

Forest. Trees.

By: Greg Myers

Greg Myers — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 00:40:03 +0000

Another good reason to use the .mac web mail client. :)

Thanks Apple.

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:25:38 +0000

Exactly my initial thought! :)

By: Sponge

Sponge — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:08:29 +0000

This is the best news I’ve heard in a while. I consider it a feature, not a bug.

By: Mactard

Mactard — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 19:09:21 +0000

No, I don’t.

By: Tim Gaden

Tim Gaden — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:36:26 +0000

You don’t think that uncovering a change in the way .Mac’swebmail handles CSS is interesting and newsworthy in its own right, quite apart from who discovers it?

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:34:06 +0000

Who gives a shit about some spammer?