On Sun, 2010-07-04 at 17:06 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: > On Sun, Jul 04, 2010 at 11:43:59AM -0400, Al wrote: > > > I know this is a bit off-topic; but close enough. > > > > I'm starting to update the email feature of one of my DB applications and > > noticed that it appears most of the fancy emails I receive are using > > just plain > > old, simple html pages, with a note about not being able to see, go here > > with a > > link. > > > > It use to be that we specified content-type text/html, etc. and sent both the > > plain ASCII and the html with boundaries and so forth. > > > > Seems like, from my preliminary Google searching, I should not waste > > time with > > the standard's way and just go straight to sending simple html pages > > since all > > modern browsers handle it well. And, it appears to be the way web is going. > > > > What are you folks doing? > > I use mutt for email, so I only see the text portion. That make me an > anomaly. However, for example there are various listserv software that > will not allow HTML in emails. > > Here is the real problem with HTML email. Any straight text message will > swell to many times its size when you HTML-ize it. Okay, so now you're > sending the message around the internet to perhaps hundreds or thousands > of users, using up many times the bandwidth that the actual message > really needs. It's like installing a 100w light bulb when a 60w will do. > There's simply no reason to suck CPU cycles all over the internet just > to make your message "prettier". > > I understand that the functions of email and browser seem to be merging. > However, this is what I would consider a bad trend. It stems from folks > like Microsoft who have convinced people, for example, that spreadsheets > function perfectly well as databases. They don't, but that doesn't stop > people from using Excel to keep their mailing lists. > > Of course, opinions like mine won't stop the merging of browsing and > reading email. Ah well. > > Paul > > -- > Paul M. Foster > I agree. Obviously the proliferation of free webmail accounts like Live, GMail, Yahoo, etc have had a large impact on the way people consider email. I actually had a friend ask me what this POP3 email thing was, and what made it different from normal email, and it took me a moment to realise his understanding of normal was one of these webmail services available through the browser! It is nice to be able to format emails nicely, but you have to realise when to restrain yourself. I've been getting loads of emails from Adobe lately that haven't been formatted well at all, and appear awfully in my email client (Evolution, which I consider to be a very good client) until I download all the images they've used as backgrounds. It's situations like this that give HTML emails an awful name. One feature I've seen in some mailing list software is the ability to track how people prefer their email formatted, so that you only send HTML emails to those that want them, and text emails to those who prefer that method. It's the best of both worlds I reckon, and one that is likely to upset as few people as possible; at the worst they might receive one email in a format they don't want before they change their preferences. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
