Lotus Notes Standard, Browsers, Defaults and HTML emails - surely this is NOT the intent
So on I went, IE-less and more the happier for it. After the restore of the laptop with Acronis and then the reinstall of XP, I went and opened Notes. All emails from internal STS Domino users rendered fine. But any email I viewed from an external source, HTML or otherwise, showed a blank body. With that I fired up iNotes and the external emails rendered fine. Client or PC issue then. Basically any MIME email showed no body content.
I reinstalled the client. No joy.
Humm, could it be a rendering issue? Down the rabbit hole we go. I checked my Lotus Notes client preferences, and it was set to "Use the browser I have set as the default for this operating system". So, it should be using FireFox to render the external email right? Wrong!
It would appear that the Lotus Notes Eclipse client is using IE to render emails on Windows XP. Once I reinstalled IE 8 (and subsequently fixed IE in the process), voila, external emails rendered as expected.
So, I have one of the (potentially) most secure collaboration platforms in the world, but it uses IE to render HTML emails? Even MS have stopped doing that (they now use the MS Word rendering engine as it has less security issues than IE). I mean, is this really the intent? Are Notes users unsuspectingly opening themselves to IE security hacks?
Does anyone know an Eclipse hack to force Eclipse to use another browser?
Discussion for this entry is now closed.
Comments (14)
You right that it's a potential security problem but maybe worse it's also a competetive problem as the core of Lotus Notes is controlled by a big competitor. Relying on the browser in the OS might be a support nightmare but then supply a rendere based on webkit. Anything else than relying on your biggest competitor.
Ah-ha. Rich found the technote I'd been looking for. Thanks for that. What I don't get is why IBM doesn't just bundle the Mozilla engine with Notes and have done with it.
And, not surprisingly the rendering looks pretty bad. I immediately set it back to *shock, horror* IE. In IBM's defense I can see why they wanted to get out the rendering engine business, but IE? Really? Again, why not just bundle engine Mozilla or at least make it user and/or admin selectable.
I'll do another post later today comparing and constrasting the rendering.
how do you think x-pages work in 8.5.1 client, it is an old version of mozilla though
I wish they used webkit instead.
But NOT for email, where most users live, and where the majority of security attacks are sent via. I suppose there is now hope, that with XPLN (Xpages in Lotus Notes) having Mozilla that IBM will re-evaluate the email rendering decision too. Time for an IdeaJam me thinks.
This issue (Notes standard on Windows rendering HTML email with IE) goes back to the putting Notes in Eclipse. Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit uses a specific browser on each platform, and on Windows, it's IE:
{ http://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php#browserplatforms }
In more recent versions of SWT, Mozilla is an option:
{ http://www.eclipse.org/swt/faq.php#howusemozilla }
Hopefully makes that option available in future versions of Notes.
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I'll be interested to hear of a way to change this. It seems the Default System Browser for windows is IE even if I specify that the default browser is Firefox... I've always thought this was strange.
Check out this: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?ca=kb&rs=899&uid=swg21282102
R8 certainly renders better without this disabled but if you have any IE issues you'll have problems rendering HTML email.