I'm directing this to Yahoo mail users in general, it's an alternate solution to the image loading problem, using only session cookies.
I'm a new K-Meleon user and a long time Yahoo Mail (Classic) user. I'm also very anti-cookie and have only ever allowed session cookies. When I recently tried viewing mail with photo attachments I found that photos embedded in the body of the mail would load fine, but the prevew images for attached images would be blank.
With a bit of effort I was able to login and view all images with only some
session cookies set, avoiding the "Always Accept Cookies" dilemma which allows cookies from all 3rd party advertisers and such, and nullifying the need to clear all cookies afterward (session cookies disappear when the browser is closed).
I am unable to use or test the 'new' Yahoo mail, but here is how to view images without any problem using
Yahoo! Mail Classic:
In the K-Meleon
Preferences (Press F2), under
Privacy & Security, in the
Accept Cookies section on the
General tab.
Choose:
Never (Block cookies)
Then click the
Exceptions button and enter the following addresses exactly as you see them here, using the
Allow for Session button:
login.yahoo.com
mail.yahoo.com
ac4.yahoo.com
Once entered, close everything and you should be set. This minimal server listing has worked for me over multiple dialup sessions here in the USA.
If you're in Europe, I suggest this list instead:
login.yahoo.com
mail.yahoo.com
ird.yahoo.com
ch1.yahoo.com
The "login.yahoo.com" and "mail.yahoo.com" will get you logged in, and the others will let you see the thumbnail image previews, because that is where they are being served from at this time.
However, if the thumbnail image servers I've listed doesn't work for you (a distinct possibility given the world-wide nature of things), or if this listing breaks at some time in the future due to a new or different server, then you can find out what you need yourself using two different methods.
You can right-click an email in your inbox, click "Save Link Target As" and save the "showMessage.htm" to your desktop, then load the htm in a text editor and look for a known picture name based on the preview images you can't see ("beautiful_landscape.jpg" for example.), and you will find an 'img' tag that will look something like this:
<img alt="beautiful_landscape.jpg" src="http: //thumbp1.mail.vip.ac4.yahoo.com/
tn?sid=112864525&mid=AMUkdhdBvsPfgdSSmwkc&midoffset=1_185512&partid=2&f=538
&fid=Inbox"/>beautiful_landscape.jpg</a>
Note the thumbnail image server, in this case "thumbp1.mail.vip.ac4.yahoo.com". Copy the address starting with the segment preceeding the yahoo, in this case "ac4.yahoo.com", then paste it into the cookie exceptions box as described above. That should take care of things.
Another method is to right-click on the block where the missing thumbnail preview image should be displayed in your email message (where your cursor changes when you hover the mouse), then click "Image -- Image Properties" in K-Meleon's pop-up context menu. You should then see an info box with a URL line that shows the server where the picture is being served from, insert the proper portion of the address into the exceptions box as I've described above. Tip: when the info box pops up you can probably press Ctrl-C to copy it's contents to your clipboard as text.
If anyone discovers any other necessary servers then please feel free to post them.
Update: I found the following list of Yahoo servers while doing some research (I also discovered this interesting site:
http://www.robtex.com/dns/ac4.yahoo.com.html ) but I do NOT recommend using any them (unless you need to), I suggest you follow the instructions above to find the servers YOU need to use, but I'll post these here as an example of what you're most likely to encounter in the future.
login.yahoo.com
mail.yahoo.com
ird.yahoo.com
ch1.yahoo.com
ac4.yahoo.com
ac3.yahoo.com
ac2.yahoo.com
re1.yahoo.com
re2.yahoo.com
re3.yahoo.com
re4.yahoo.com
sp1.yahoo.com
sp2.yahoo.com
sk1.yahoo.com
gq1.yahoo.com
tp2.yahoo.com
aue.yahoo.com
mud.yahoo.com
ukl.yahoo.com
yimg.com
Those last few are actually equivilent to some higher in the list but I've included them because they are used frequently. A reverse lookup of "yimg.com", for example, leads to sp1 and re4.yahoo.com. Also, there seems to be many country specific servers, particularly in Asia, such
as: in2.yahoo.com, cn2.yahoo.com, kr1.yahoo.com, kr3.yahoo.com, tw1.yahoo.com, sg1.yahoo.com, cnh.yahoo.com. I will also note that the "login.yahoo.com" URL could change in different countries too. Again, I don't recommend blindly adding any of these to your cookie exceptions list.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2009 07:23AM by Doon.