BEARHTML Help 2.7.6

Shift + F1 switches between this help and the message shown before

Keyboard

Pg Up/Pg Dn Scrolls display by a page
Shift + Pg Up/Pg Dn Scrolls and selects by a page
Home/End Scrolls to beginning/end of line
Shift + Home/End Scrolls & Selects to beginning/end of line
Shift + Ctrl + Home/End Scrolls & Selects to beginning/end of document
Left/Right Arrow Scrolls by char
Shift + Left/Right Arrow Scrolls & Selects chars
Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow Scrolls by words
Shift + Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow Scrolls & Selects words
DoubleClick Selects current word
Up/Down Arrow Scrolls by line
Mousewheel Scrolls by line (+)
Shift + Up/Down Arrow Scrolls & Selects lines
Shift + F8 Select current line
Ctrl + C Copy selected text to Clipboard
Ctrl + A Select All
SpaceBar Scrolls down a page
Ctrl + SpaceBar Scrolls up a page
Ctrl + Mousewheel Attempt to Decrease/Increase fontsize (*)
Numpad '/' (รท) or '*' Attempt to Decrease/Increase fontsize (*)
'<' or '>' Attempt to Decrease/Increase fontsize (*)
'Ctrl + PageDown/PageUp Attempt to Decrease/Increase fontsize (*)
Shift + Ctrl + 'P' Print html page only
Shift + Ctrl + 'U' Display remote graphics
Shift + Ctrl + 'Y' Clear remote graphics cache
(*) For different keyboards
(+) See Mousewheel scrolling amounts in Bearhtml.ini

Introduction.

Bearhtml is an Html page renderer (displayer), it is not a browser. Failure to display a page may be for one of two main reasons:
  1. Badly coded Html
  2. Dynamic coding (scripting)
In either case you can attempt to view the page by right clicking and selecting "Show in Browser"

Graphics

Remote URL location graphics files are displayed as Unfetched remote graphic  To see remote graphics, key in Shift + Ctrl + 'U', or right click in the message area (not on a graphic area) and select "Show picture", or ensure that Message Reader option is set to choose fetching automatically. There will be a delay while graphics are fetched. While remote graphics are being downloaded, a counter can be seen to show progress. Do not close the message until this counter completes the countdown.
In the case of corrupt or truncated graphics files a small box with an exclamation point Corrupt graphic inside it will be displayed to indicate the presence of an undisplayable graphic. Unavailable graphics files will stay as Unfetched remote graphic

Invalid Html

If Bearhtml is unable to display the html message this causes LibTidy to be invoked to attempt a repair. An attempt is then made to display the repaired message. If this fails the original source html is shown in the display area. Failure at this point indicates a seriously flawed html message. If the display is blank or badly formatted, right click and select "Open in web browser".
Want to do your own troubleshooting? While the message is open, open Windows Explorer, and go to your Temporary files directory (eg; C:\TEMP or C:\WINDOWS\TEMP) and look for a file with a name like WPM$1234.PM$ that has just been created. Open it in Notepad, and it should be a bunch of Html. Save the file as an html file, ie wpm$1234.htm, then open your favorite browser and "Open file" on this file.

Character sets

Html is displayed using the users normal character set (eg ISO-8859-1). If you see blank white squares where text should appear, this is a sign that the sender is using a different character set. Repeat the troubleshooting method above, but when in your browser go to View/Character Encoding and select one of the methods shown in the list. If one of these makes the message readable, you should inform the sender of the character set problem, and have them identify the character set they use in the message headers.
Users of Windows 95 have limited character set support and should code CheckUTF8=false in Bearhtml.ini.

Suspicious Html

Urls that are clicked are checked for possibility of being dangerous, ie Fraudulent asking for personal information Specifically: If a problem is detected a dialog will prompt you. Clicking OK will invoke the browser. Clicking Cancel, the Url will be remembered for the rest of the Pegasus Mail session. Moving the mouse cursor over the Url again will cause the mouse cursor to turn into a stop sign.
For BlackList checking: WantBl=Yes/No in BearHtml.ini. Click on the Url link. The status line will show result.

Phishing detection

In addition to blacklist validation, Bearhtml will also examine the clickable link in the display. If well known and reputable businesses domain names occur anywhere other than in the correct part of a Url, a warning dialog will be displayed. Users can maintain the list in Bearwarn.txt with their own domains. See Bearwarn.txt for more info.

Scripting

No form of scripting is supported, ie Javascript. Any such coding in a message is ignored. This makes the display of such messages problematic. If needed this html should be passed to a full browser .
In addition all requests for setting or retrieving Cookies are ignored.

Printing

At present Bearhtml does not print email messages with the envelope information, but simply prints the html page that is being displayed to the default Windows printer. Optionally the printer can be changed by setting the PrinterSetup= value to Yes in Bearhtml.ini.

Styles

At present, inline style definitions are processed. Remote URL location styles are not fetched.

Font sizing

Increasing or decreasing the default fontsize using the Ctrl + mousewheel may not work in all cases, and may cause strange formatting in some cases. If a message already has coded font sizes, these will override any default size. Secondly any message with parts coded with a font size, and other parts left to the default size may appear poorly formatted. Note there are multiple keyboard methods to adjust font size in the list above.

Logging

For problem investigation a log file can be created in the Pegasus Mail NewMail directory (eg c:\pmail\mail), it is a text file with name of Bearhtml.log, that can be reviewed using Notepad etc.
In cases where LibTidy is invoked to attempt repair of html, a file Beartidy.txt can be found in the user NewMail directory which contains the Tidy report.

Timeouts

Bearhtml uses Windows Internet services (WinInet.dll) to perform DNS lookups and fetch webpages. Occasionally the Internet becomes slowed down, or services such a DNS have shutdown failures. A timeout is detected by Windows Internet services and Bearhtml is advised (Typical timeout is 60 seconds). The MaxFetchTime value in Bearhtml indicates the maximum time the use is willing wait, which will likely be less than this timeout value. If the download time exceeds this MaxFetchTime value, all further downloads for this message are stopped.

Scrolling

There are two forms of scrolling up or down a webpage. Scrollbars on the edge of the display and keyboard characters. In the case of scrollbars, this always uses the Windows standard feature of moving by an amount of pixels in either direction, regardless of where the text cursor is located.
Using the keyboard performs text sensitive scrolling movements to move by an amount of "lines" and relocate the text cursor. In this case the distance scrolled can be an amount easily explained, or in the case of mixed text and graphics the distance scrolled can be quite difficult to explain. Bearhtml will for instance scroll up/down by a page height of pixels and try to find the new line of text completely in view to place the cursor.

Redirection.

Http protocol allows that a Url request be modified by the web server to fetch an object (page or image) from another location. Bearhtml can support this feature but by default is disabled. Care must be taken in choosing to enable redirection. It is beyond the scope of this file to describe the risks. See Google searches such as: http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Http+redirection

Installation

  1. Shut-down Pegasus Mail
  2. Unzip the content of the new bearhtml.zip into the Pegasus Mail executables directory (eg: c:\pmail).
  3. If required, edit Bearhtml.ini and Bearwarn.txt
  4. If required, save Bearhtml.ini into the user NewMail directory to override the default location values
  5. Restart Pegasus Mail

Un-Install

  1. Shut-down Pegasus Mail
  2. Rename or delete Bearhtml.dll
  3. Restart Pegasus Mail

Contents of Bearhtml.ini
Users of Windows 95 have limited character set support and should code CheckUTF8=false in Bearhtml.ini.

Copyrights