Email feeds unreadable, overlapping text
October 4, 2009 1:12 PM Subscribe
I have gotten a few emails that people are having troubles with
viewing the posts in the email they receive (feedreaders are fine), it
comes through "all scrunched up" and over-lapping in text and picture.
After checking different things on my end; feedburner site, emails, feedreaders, I am still working on getting this fixed and need to narrow down the issue.
* Most common is from people with yahoo accounts, but I have a yahoo acccount I tested and it was fine - I also have people who get the email via bellsouth, msn that have trouble.
*The browsers used are Firefox and IE, any version
*Doesn't matter where they access it at, home or work.
Has anyone heard of this and found a fix to it? I am beginning to think this is something on their end and not mine.
* Most common is from people with yahoo accounts, but I have a yahoo acccount I tested and it was fine - I also have people who get the email via bellsouth, msn that have trouble.
*The browsers used are Firefox and IE, any version
*Doesn't matter where they access it at, home or work.
Has anyone heard of this and found a fix to it? I am beginning to think this is something on their end and not mine.
Would help if we could see the raw email and headers. Can you post the full email source somewhere? pastebin is usually good. Instructions to get the email source:
- Thunderbird: go to "View" -> "Message Source"
- GMail: The little down arrow/triangle by "Reply" -> "Show Original"
- Yahoo Classic: "Full Headers" link at the bottom
- Yahoo Beta: "Actions" -> "Full Headers", plus a copy of the source
Really, the Yahoo options for debugging this problem suck. If you can get it into GMail or another client that would be great.
If you want you can leave out the 'Received' headers as those often contain some personal information.
posted by sbutler at 3:13 PM on October 4, 2009 [1 favorite]
- Thunderbird: go to "View" -> "Message Source"
- GMail: The little down arrow/triangle by "Reply" -> "Show Original"
- Yahoo Classic: "Full Headers" link at the bottom
- Yahoo Beta: "Actions" -> "Full Headers", plus a copy of the source
Really, the Yahoo options for debugging this problem suck. If you can get it into GMail or another client that would be great.
If you want you can leave out the 'Received' headers as those often contain some personal information.
posted by sbutler at 3:13 PM on October 4, 2009 [1 favorite]
You seem to be confusing "email reader" with "web browser". I frequently get emails that have overlapping text, etc, in my mailreader but they appear just fine when I "view as webpage". This despite the fact that I'm using a fully updated mailreader. I also get lots that appear just fine in the newsreader.
What program are they using to read their email? It may depend more on the mail reader they're using than the browser (yes, even now, there are people who don't read their email through a website).
My guess would be, as only some people at various ISPs are having trouble, that the people who are seeing the garbled messages are using an actual mail reader (gasp!) to read email, rather than accessing through a web interface. If this is the case, the problem is on "their end", caused by the different ways in which mail readers and web browsers interpret HTML. (Don't ask me to explicate that -- it's not my specialty, but it has become apparent that there is one.) The solution, however, is on your end -- not that I know what it is, but based on the number of messages containing HTML that do appear properly in my newsreader, it's solvable.
posted by jlkr at 7:06 PM on October 4, 2009
What program are they using to read their email? It may depend more on the mail reader they're using than the browser (yes, even now, there are people who don't read their email through a website).
My guess would be, as only some people at various ISPs are having trouble, that the people who are seeing the garbled messages are using an actual mail reader (gasp!) to read email, rather than accessing through a web interface. If this is the case, the problem is on "their end", caused by the different ways in which mail readers and web browsers interpret HTML. (Don't ask me to explicate that -- it's not my specialty, but it has become apparent that there is one.) The solution, however, is on your end -- not that I know what it is, but based on the number of messages containing HTML that do appear properly in my newsreader, it's solvable.
posted by jlkr at 7:06 PM on October 4, 2009
Response by poster: People are signed up for updates from my blog and they get them in their email instead of reading the updates via a feedreader like google or bloglines.
Recently I sent out a post that had no photos included in the post and those that had contacted me about the troubles said that this last post came through fine... so I am thinking that it is the picture not being downloaded properly by their yahoo, msn or whatever account.
I still think it is their email not reading things correctly as it comes through gmail and newsreaders just fine.
posted by Frugalforlife at 9:14 PM on October 5, 2009
Recently I sent out a post that had no photos included in the post and those that had contacted me about the troubles said that this last post came through fine... so I am thinking that it is the picture not being downloaded properly by their yahoo, msn or whatever account.
I still think it is their email not reading things correctly as it comes through gmail and newsreaders just fine.
posted by Frugalforlife at 9:14 PM on October 5, 2009
I still think it is their email not reading things correctly
This part of the sentence is fine. Isn't that what I said? OK, so I said "differently" not "not correctly". (IIRC the HTML standards (sic) are different for email and web.)
that it is the picture not being downloaded properly by their yahoo, msn or whatever account.
this part is not. You missed my point, pretty much entirely. Find out what these clients are using to READ their email, not what ISP they're using. Unless everyone using ISP X is having the problem while everyone on ISP Q is not, the problem is not due to ISP X.
If some clients on ISP X are having problems while others are not, it's almost certainly something on their end. It may be the settings on their browser, or firewalls, or they may be using a mailreader to read their email.
And, while this may be something you don't want to hear, if the problem is due to your clients using a mailreader, it is your responsibility to provide messages in a format they can read (unless you want them to go away in disgust).
Note that I am not saying that you need to troubleshoot everyone's system. Just ask a simple question "what program do you use to read your email?" If the answer is "I read it on MSN, Y!, etc" it's their problem to solve. If the answer is "I use Agent, Eudora, etc", it's a problem that you need to solve.
posted by jlkr at 8:50 PM on October 6, 2009
This part of the sentence is fine. Isn't that what I said? OK, so I said "differently" not "not correctly". (IIRC the HTML standards (sic) are different for email and web.)
that it is the picture not being downloaded properly by their yahoo, msn or whatever account.
this part is not. You missed my point, pretty much entirely. Find out what these clients are using to READ their email, not what ISP they're using. Unless everyone using ISP X is having the problem while everyone on ISP Q is not, the problem is not due to ISP X.
If some clients on ISP X are having problems while others are not, it's almost certainly something on their end. It may be the settings on their browser, or firewalls, or they may be using a mailreader to read their email.
And, while this may be something you don't want to hear, if the problem is due to your clients using a mailreader, it is your responsibility to provide messages in a format they can read (unless you want them to go away in disgust).
Note that I am not saying that you need to troubleshoot everyone's system. Just ask a simple question "what program do you use to read your email?" If the answer is "I read it on MSN, Y!, etc" it's their problem to solve. If the answer is "I use Agent, Eudora, etc", it's a problem that you need to solve.
posted by jlkr at 8:50 PM on October 6, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
Could you re-describe the whole process from begining to end? Like: You are posting to a blog and sending out a feed of the post by email using feedburner. Some of the people getting the feedburner mails are getting mangled text, or whatever is happening.
Are you using WordPress by any chance?
posted by DarlingBri at 3:03 PM on October 4, 2009