Apple has posted a Knowledge Base article detailing a problem with generating Mail messages after installing Safari 5 on a system running the latest version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard. When you start an email message in Mail using some other program to get the ball rolling, the new message may have black text on a black background, rendering it unreadable.

Apple may issue a software fix. Meanwhile, two workarounds are available:

• Click in the message's body, and then choose Format > Make Plain Text.
• But, if your message contains any links, try this: Click in the message's body, and then choose Edit > Select All. Choose Edit > Cut. Press the Delete key to clear any remaining characters. Finally, choose Edit > Paste and Match Style.

For full information see Apple's description of the problem and its fix.

—Posted by Doug McLean on July 1, 2010