Safari and the new Yahoo! Mail interface (#3)

Over the past few days, we've been covering reports of incompatibilities between Safari and the newly "upgraded" Yahoo! Mail system. Our coverage has generated a significant amount of reader feedback on two different sets of issues: problems with buttons and menus, and HTML formatting options.

Buttons/menus not working properly The most significant -- and most common -- issue reported is interface elements that do not work: buttons that do nothing, drop-down menus that don't appear properly, "Check All" links that don't function, etc.

As we noted yesterday, this problem does not affect all users; we can't reproduce it on our Macs here at MacFixIt, and we've received a good number of email messages from MacFixIt readers who are using the new Yahoo! Mail without problems.

Temporary problem? Although we received a large number of reports of these problems over the past few days, more than one reader has suggested that the problems were either initial glitches as the new version of Yahoo! Mail was rolled out, or problems due to overwhelming traffic; whatever the case, these users initially had problems but later were able to use the site satisfactorily. Kishore Pasumarty writes:

"I use Panther, Safari and Free Yahoo Mail. Yesterday, I had problems deleting Yahoo emails, and some buttons did not work. Today, everything seems OK."

However, if the solution suggested in the next section works, then a more likely explanation is that Safari had at some point been quit or otherwise had its cache files reset, thus "starting over" the next time Yahoo! Mail was accessed.

Fix for button/menu issues? If you are still experiencing these button/menu/link issues, Reader Michael Ruschak suggests a possible solution:

"Simply clear the cache [via Safari -> Empty Cache] because if you use Yahoo! Mail all the time then it looks [bad] in the browser and things don't work. By clearing the cache you start fresh. This should solve most people's problems. You could also simply reset Safari completely."

Since we can't reproduce the original issues on our Macs here at MacFixIt, we haven't been able to confirm that Michael's solution works. If you've been experiencing these problems, please drop us an email at Late-breakers@macfixit.com to let us know if clearing Safari's cache fixes things for you.

No HTML mail composition options for Mac users Yesterday we also covered a reader report that Mac users are unable to access HTML options when composing email messages in Yahoo! Mail. (Yahoo! calls these options "Color and Graphics.") Under any Mac browser, the options don't even appear; if you use Safari's Debug menu to force Safari to represent itself as a Windows browser (such as Internet Explorer 6.0), the options appear but there is no text box in which to compose your message.

We've received a good number of confirmations of this issue, including an interesting follow-up from reader Joseph Mina indicating that this is a deliberate decision by Yahoo!:

"HTML mail has not been available to Mac users since it was first introduced in final form back in 2002. (It was available while in beta testing.) I asked Yahoo back then if a Mac version would be available. The response was typical Yahoo -- no plans at this time. If I use the debug menu to change the browser to MSIE 6.0, the HTML toolbar loads, however, the text field is not accessible. I can't imagine it takes any great leap to make HTML available on the OS X platform."

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