Apologies: IPKat emails causing problems

In the last 24 hours we have been told by several readers that posts received by email from the IPKat are causing problems when opened in Outlook: the program hangs for anything from several seconds to a minute or two, or even crashes.

We are investigating the problem, which only seems to affect posts from the last couple of days, and which appears to be related to the pictures linked to in our posts.

If you have experienced the same problem we apologise sincerely, and hope we figure it out before you are tempted to hit "unsubscribe". Hang in there. If you have experienced this problem in the last day or so, and you are using a mail client other than Outlook, please let us know via theipkat@gmail.com.

This post is deliberately image-free in the hope that it sneaks, cat-like, under whatever fence is blocking the recent IPKat emails.

UPDATE:
It appears Blogger changed how images are inserted into the HTML code of their webpages. For those who want to know the details, they switched from absolute URLs to protocol-relative URLs.

Browsers, and web-based email platforms, can handle the protocol-relative URLs seamlessly. Outlook and Lotus Notes, on the other hand, are sent into a tailspin, looking for the image file on the local server or network, when in fact it is being hosted far, far away.

At the time of this update, Blogger appears to have reverted back to absolute URLs. If so, then the problem should not recur. The IPKat will keep an eye on the situation and will endeavour to carefully check any posts with images before they are sent to email subscribers.