sTunnel for modern email protocols in old email clients

[Dave-H]

A couple more example e-mails, this time both from Sky!
In this case, one of them opens immediately, the other doesn't.
It seems to be only the ones from the Sky support forum which have the problem, other messages from Sky seem to be OK.
As before, the non-working one opens in IE8 and displays, but there is then a frozen pause (about the same duration as on Eudora) and then the ActiveX warning banner pops up at the top.
The other one displays without this.
The working one does reference a .woff file in its source code, but not in the same way or to the same extent as the non-working one.
I have tried un-ticking "use separate settings from Internet Explorer" in Eudora's options, and this allows me to use the Accessibility options in Internet Settings to ignore colours, fonts, and styles when displaying pages. This does what it says, and messages in Eudora then display using the default Times New Roman font as expected.
It makes no difference to the delay in them displaying though.

WorkingSkyEmailSource.htm

NonWorkingSkyEmailSource.htm

Edited February 10, 2019 by Dave-H
Addition

[heinoganda]

@Dave-H

The Style Code with Web Open Font Format in the HTML mail leads to the processing errors where the frozen pause causes in the Microsoft Viewer at Eudora. It has the reloading of pictures ect. no influence. I have sent you two modified e-mails (Style Code with Web Open Font Format removed) for testing in Eudora.

Therefore the idea may be a plugin for Eudora with which such code will be removed, similar to an ad blocker with which it is possible to remove certain code from a web page. Unfortunately, I did not find anything for Eudora.

[Dave-H]

They both open fine in Eudora, with no delay.

[Dave-H]

Another strange one this evening.
I received another e-mail from Sky, a marketing message, not from the forum, and although it opens immediately in Eudora, the body is completely blank, only the header is displayed!
It also does this if opened in IE8 or Firefox!
It displays fine in the e-mail app on my Android phone.
Another one to analyse!

BlankSkyEmail.htm

[heinoganda]

@Dave-H

You are welcome to forward this e-mail to me for testing purposes, but please do not use Eudora.

[Mathwiz]

On 2/9/2019 at 7:05 PM, heinoganda said:

... a suitable plugin for Eudora could provide a remedy, similar to an ad blocker....

Didn't know plug-ins were an option for Eudora. Sounds like that's the way to go - in fact, while at it, it could even, you know, block ads....

But actually the problems IE8 has with that .css code snippet above go way beyond not being able to handle .woff files. It doesn't even manage to download them because of a bug: it tries to download something named "//www.sky.com/assets/fonts/sky-regular.woff")%20format("woff")" which obviously doesn't exist and would trigger a 404 error - if it used http: or https: to try to download it to start with! (You can prove this by editing the email, adding https: in front of the //'s, and monitoring what IE8 requests when it opens the edited file with ProxHTTPSProxyMII.)

But actually it uses file: instead, which is unlikely to work because there's probably no NFS server named www on your home network, and your network probably isn't using a domain of sky.com either....

[dencorso]

Now, this is uncontroversibly Off-Topic!

1 hour ago, Mathwiz said:

in fact, while at it, it could even, you know, block ads....

The best and more direct way for blocking ads is Pi-hole:  https://pi-hole.net/
It works like a charm (although it has limits, of course...). I use it for more than 2 years, already, and love it.

Now... Let's get beck On-Topic, shall we?

[heinoganda]

The problem is the Style Code with Web Open Font Format (woff file) in the e-mail itself where the frozen pause causes in the Microsoft Viewer at Eudora. Thanks to HTTPSProxy, the parts of the e-mail, such as images, fonts and so on, can be easily loaded even on servers where the encryption of Windows XP is not supported. A POP Proxy would still be a possibility, where with appropriate e-mails, in which code could be intervened. It's not about blocking ads, it's about the HTML code in the e-mail itself. On the subject "BlankSkyEmail.htm" does not help, since only the corrupted code of Eudora exists as Eudora shows this e-mail, therefore, the request to Dave-H this e-mail best from the phone to forward.
 

Please read the following link to Web Open Font Format :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Open_Font_Format

[Dave-H]

Just forwarded the blank e-mail to you @heinoganda.
From my phone so Eudora won't corrupt it in any way.

[heinoganda]

55 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

Just forwarded the blank e-mail to you @heinoganda.
From my phone so Eudora won't corrupt it in any way.

Because you did not forward the original e-mail, but added the comment "Sent from my smartphone", the HTML code was taken from the smartphone where the
Web Open Font Format was processed. Of course Eudora has no problems with this e-mail. 

[Dave-H]

Oh dear!
OK I've just forwarded it again from my phone with my signature turned off this time.
I don't know if that will make the difference.
I also didn't alter the subject line this time either (I added "(Test 3)" to it last time).
I hope it gets to you unaltered this time!
Cheers, Dave.

[dencorso]

@Dave-H: Is Eudora monolithic? (I mean: just a single executable or "portable" as people like to call that).
If not, would you please post a listing of the %Program Files%\Eudora folder? I think I may have an embryo of an idea...

[Dave-H]

@dencorso
I sent you a PM regarding this!

Edited February 11, 2019 by Dave-H

[Mathwiz]

15 hours ago, dencorso said:

Now, this is uncontroversibly Off-Topic!

The best and more direct way for blocking ads is Pi-hole:  https://pi-hole.net/
It works like a charm (although it has limits, of course...). I use it for more than 2 years, already, and love it.

Now... Let's get beck On-Topic, shall we?

Thanks; looking at it now. It looks a lot like an old program I used to use for ad-blocking called DNSKong. But it's not a Eudora plug-in, so it doesn't help here.

(Incidentally, it's "incontrovertibly" English can really suck at times.)

10 hours ago, heinoganda said:

It's not about blocking ads, it's about the HTML code in the e-mail itself.

Something must have gotten lost in translation. The only reason I mentioned ad-blocking is that you mentioned:

On 2/10/2019 at 12:16 PM, heinoganda said:

a plugin for Eudora with which such code will be removed, similar to an ad blocker

I didn't even know Eudora supported plug-ins! But if it does, your idea sounds good to me.

10 hours ago, heinoganda said:

Please read the following link to Web Open Font Format :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Open_Font_Format

I'm aware of .woff files, and it's true that, as of IE8, mshtml.dll didn't support them:

On 2/7/2019 at 9:28 AM, Mathwiz said:

Unfortunately, IE8 doesn't support the .woff font files that these emails use anyway.

But that's not the only problem with sky.com's HTML emails! To prove this, try editing @Dave-H's original HTML, changing

url("//www.sky.com/assets/fonts/sky-regular.woff") format("woff")
url("//www.sky.com/assets/fonts/sky-medium.woff") format("woff")

to

url("//assets.sky.com/fonts/sky_regular.eot?") format("embedded-opentype")
url("//assets.sky.com/fonts/sky_medium.eot?") format("embedded-opentype")

Those .eot files do exist on sky.com's servers - I checked - and .eot is supported; but IE8 will still open it with a progress bar that "stalls" for several seconds.

But if you instead change

@import "//helpforum.sky.com/html/assets/toolkit.css"
url("//www.sky.com/assets/fonts/sky-regular.woff")
url("//www.sky.com/assets/fonts/sky-medium.woff")

to

@import "https://helpforum.sky.com/html/assets/toolkit.css"
url("https://www.sky.com/assets/fonts/sky-regular.woff")
url("https://www.sky.com/assets/fonts/sky-medium.woff")

merely adding "https:" in front of each double-slash, IE8 will now open the file without the progress bar stalling, even though you loaded unsupported .woff files!

Seems obvious that the delay is caused by protocol-relative URLs, not by unsupported font files.

[dencorso]

10 minutes ago, Mathwiz said:

Incidentally, it's "incontrovertibly" English can really suck at times.

You rock, thanks!   I transposed it directly from the Portuguese "incontroversível", instead of looking it up at a dictionary, so I deserved the fail...