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Communications The Internet

Is HTML E-mail Still Evil? 201

Posted by Cliff from the my-MUA-has-turned-into-a-browser dept.
Charlie Campbell asks: "My boss is pretty adamant about getting HTML newsletters to our clients; and, I'm pretty adamant about finding an alternative. I can understand the benefits in HTML mail from a designer's (mine) and marketing standpoint (that of my boss); yet, based on foreseeable issues with recipient software, mail filters, dial-up connections, etc. I feel that the risks outweigh the benefits. We've all heard this a million times... but is it now an outdated concern? Should I trust our client-base to be fully equipped for such a mailer? Should I worry about improper delivery marring our professional image? Is there anyone documenting the issue from a current-day perspective?"
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Is HTML E-mail Still Evil? More

Is HTML E-mail Still Evil?

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  • Unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hahafaha ( 844574 ) <lgrinberg@gmail.com> on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:46PM (#12530202)
    I doubt that it will cause a professionalism problem. Anyone who cannot read HTML emails know that they exist and that they can't read them and will therefore, not think of your company as being non-professional. It is a good idea to allow the recipient to choose whether he wants HTML formatted news or plain-text, but the current position is not as bad as it may seem.

    • Re:Unlikely (Score:2, Informative)

      by toddbu ( 748790 )
      I agree. We send virtually all email from our web site in HTML with the exception of invoice email. The reason that we send invoices in text is that we want to minimize the possibility of getting trapped by a spam filter. Start adding images and stuff like that and you'll get picked off.

      My question for you is "what is your target audience?" If it's my mom then by all means send HTML email. If it's a bunch of geeks that hate HTML email then send them text. Actually, you can send both at the same time

      • Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Informative)

        by b00m3rang ( 682108 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:49PM (#12530618)
        For what it's worth, one reason that HTML email is more widely accepted is that many clients turn off image rendering and javascript and other "bad" things by default. This leaves the remaining message pretty benign.
        ...and pretty UGLY. Text that doesn't line up, placeholder boxes for missing imges, pretty much something I'd delete immediately 100 times out of 100.

  • Offer a plaintext alternative (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pomo monster ( 873962 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:47PM (#12530207)
    I don't mind HTML email, personally, but when I have a choice, I opt for the plain-text version. I think that's the key--allow people to receive your newsletters, receipts, or whatever in the format they want, and things should be fine.

    I'd also default to HTML mailings, simply because the people who bitch loudest about HTML (non-pejorative) are also probably capable of finding the preference for plaintext themselves.
    • Do both.

      Send a plain text body and include a URL for the web version of the newsletter (and optional username+password). By keeping the body plain text and/or include a link to the web version, you increase accessibiliy for lowbandwidth users (modem, GPRS, etc.) and it works for all mail clients. An additional advantage of using the WWW for what it's good at is that you get some (vague) usage statistics.

      If your message cannot be conveyed in plain text, then it's probably time to rethink the whole new

      • If your message cannot be conveyed in plain text, then it's probably time to rethink the whole newsletter approach.
        That must be why newspapers have a single size and type font without images, why people go to movie theaters to read screenplays, and why we're all reading gopher://slashdot.org [slashdot.org].

        • Then it's good enough for me, too (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @08:21PM (#12532469)
          That must be why newspapers have a single size and type font without images, why people go to movie theaters to read screenplays, and why we're all reading gopher://slashdot.org [slashdot.org].

          Newspapers neither cost more nor take longer to read the more images they contain.

          Going to a movie theatre doesn't include a hidden bug at the start of the movie that confirms to some marketing droid that I'm a real person and they should feel free to spam my future visits with an extra 30 minutes of commercials before the movie starts.

          And speaking as a former modem user who hasn't had broadband for that long, I promise you Slashdot is perfectly usable and just as informative/interesting with images disabled.

          The grandparent was right on the money. E-mail is a text medium. If you can't tell me something through that medium, then chances are I don't want your e-mail. In fact, and this is a very good reason that businesses should not send HTML e-mails without an explicit request, your e-mail will get a huge negative score on my Bayesian anti-spam filter just for having it. That applies whether it's alone or combined with a separate text-only version, though if the text-only version matches the HTML content closely the penalty isn't so great. Moreover, even if it gets through the filter, it'll get rendered as plain text anyway, and therefore probably look worse than it would have done if you'd just sent me that in the first place. It's not exactly likely to improve your sales/feedback level/customer satisfaction/whatever on either count...

    • For AppleMail users (Score:4, Informative)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:25PM (#12531523) Homepage Journal
      1. quit Mail
      2. defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText 1
      3. start Mail

      then use cmd-} to cycle through Parts if you need HTML for some reason. Mostly HTML parts from companies consist solely of images to a graphics layout, complete with webbugs so it's rarely needed.

  • Is HTML E-mail Still Evil? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by line-bundle ( 235965 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:48PM (#12530215) Homepage Journal
    Yes.
    • It's less evil now that almost all of the MUAs don't run javascript or load images unless they were included in the message.

      Still, though, text/plain looks far more professional, even if less snazzy.

    • Re:Is HTML E-mail Still Evil? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SpaceLifeForm ( 228190 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:02PM (#12530302)
      If their market-think really believes that HTML email is so much better than text, they should consider just an e-mail of two URLs to their website and let the reader decide which (if either) they want to read. That would save them bandwidth also.

      But, that likely would be dismissed (because it makes sense). In market-think, they want the spotaneous impression. They really believe that colorful flashing crap helps sales. And since there are enough 'Ooh, pretty!' types out there, they have themselves convinced that it really works. When it comes to marketing, you can convince yourself by twisting the numbers and the interpretations so that any plan you want to come up with can be justified.

      See Iraq.


      • See Iraq.

        If we can not use HTML in your e-mail then The Terrorists Have Won!
      • They really believe that colorful flashing crap helps sales.

        That wouldn't be because colorful flashing crap DOES help sales, would it? What is a better sales pitch, some plain text "come check us out" blurb, or a nice colorful picture of something? It may not be true for you, but it is true for 95% of any mass-market audience.
      • You realize that only people who have HTML-capable email clients will bother trying to click those two URLs, right?

        It's a PITA to find, copy, and paste a long URL.

    • Re:Is HTML E-mail Still Evil? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      HTML mail solves a lot of the problems which still plague plaintext email:
      • There is no accepted and implemented standard for word wrapping. There is "wrap at 72, quote to 80", which to few know how to get right to avoid comb quoting, and there is format: flowed, which too many clients don't implement correctly. HTML mail has no problems with word wrapping, as it is an essential part of HTML.
      • Special character encoding. Umlauts and other 8-bit characters still don't display right in many combinations of M

  • Um... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by torinth ( 216077 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:49PM (#12530220) Homepage
    Hundreds of thousands of email content publishers ask their users whether they want plain-text or HTML versions. Even if most users don't understand the question, they're used to being asked. Why don't you try that and then just publish one version of your newsletter to each of the resulting lists?

  • Welcome to the real world (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NutscrapeSucks ( 446616 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:50PM (#12530224)
    99% of business email is HTML. Nobody cares about the "evil" of HTML mail except a few crusty old geeks. Last I checked, even Mozilla defaults to sending HTML mail.

    Keep in mind that business people come from the tradition of using propriety mailers like Lotus ccMail, Lotus Notes, and MSMail, and saw no reason to remove functionality when switching to Internet mail. These people just don't care about the archaic 7-bit Internet olden days. (And, yes, HTML in mail was a design mistake, but as of yet it's the only way to get colored fonts and pictures in your mail, so that's what's used.)

    Just make sure include a text/plain part, so if your recpients want to drop the HTML, they have that option.
    • That is correct. Join the 21st century where people actually *want* to boldface text in their email... amazing!

    • Re:Welcome to the real world (Score:4, Insightful)

      by crath ( 80215 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @03:30PM (#12530816) Homepage

      It's not even that Nobody cares about the "evil" of HTML; HTML email was never evil to begin with. There are senders who choose to send poorly formatted emails (causing incorrect results for the receiver), and there are senders who attempt to cause havoc by embedding nasty constructs in their email, but HTML email itself is not inherently evil.

      • I don't think there was ever a time when HTML as a pure markup language was used for Email. When Nutscrape introduced a HTML email client, they did it at the same time as Plugins/Java/Javascript, which is how it got it's "evil" reputation.

        I remember when "NeXTMail" (MS-RTF?) was considered a pretty neat trick.
      • Have you ever tried making HTML emails by hand ?

        One of the troubles is, is that there is no One True Way to package one's MIME to have it rendered as HTML in a person's Email client.

        is one supposed to even use MIME at all ?

        Some clients, such as Outlook Express, will happily cope with just a
        Content-Type: text/html in the headers though these days OE doesn't auto-download anything not attached such as images or ActiveX Controls !

        Some people use nested multipart/alternative like so :

        1 multipart/alternativ

  • In my inbox, most html mail gets dumped (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mycroft_514 ( 701676 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:50PM (#12530225) Journal
    before I even read it, so it if you want me to read it, send it plain text.

    • Re:In my inbox, most html mail gets dumped (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's fine if you only communicate with your cadre of geeks. But there's this strange species called "girls". They're curvey and smell nice and tend to send HTML email.

    • Re:In my inbox, most html mail gets dumped (Score:4, Informative)

      by kawika ( 87069 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:46PM (#12530606)
      My Bayesian spam filter, k9 [keir.net] has had only 4 false positives in six months. All of them were from HTML messages composed in Word. Seems that a lot of spammers don't know HTML and use Word to compose their spam as well.

      Our company sends out a newsletter and I have (successfully) fought the same battle against HTML. Outlook 2003 doesn't even render external images anymore, so if it's a question of beauty just show your boss what that email looks like without its images.
      • It's actually not that they're using Word by choice, it's that Word is the default HTML editor used when composing email in Outlook. I haven't used enough Outlook to know if it's changable.
      • I love when spammers use Word. It reveals their real name and the name of their business, unless they lied when they installed MS Office, or used someone else's PC. I may even get information from the images they tried to include with the URL's still pointing to their C: drive.

        I used K9 a lot too, back when I was using OE on Windows (now I'm on Linux). Though it's closed source, I felt inclined to donate $20 to him a couple years ago when it was getting updates every few weeks. It's unfortunate to see that

  • Alternatives (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Monkeman ( 827301 )
    It'd be interesting to see some form of bbcode for email. It'd do what most people would need it to do and I don't really think one can do a lot of damage with bbcode. Except emotional damage with the [img] tag, but nobody cares about that.

  • Depends on who your recipients are (Score:4, Insightful)

    by __david__ ( 45671 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:52PM (#12530240) Homepage
    If you're targetting savvy developers (ie, me), then they probably wont read your crappy html mail (and I'd probably unsubscribe even if it were text, but that's really a different issue). But if you were targetting my mom, she'd probably not notice or care. In fact, she might like the html version with its pretty pictures or whatever.

    The best way is to send both a text part and an HTML part and let the client decide how they want to see it. I made sure my client automatically shows me the text part if there are both.

    -David
  • Even with my best .muttrc trickery, I've yet to be able to convince mutt to view all html emials in lynx or whatever else. I've got it to pick up most of them, but 1 in 10 I have to view html source.

    Also, rendering html in a graphical email client can stillbe troublesome for slower computers.

  • the fact that you're asking... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spoonyfork ( 23307 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [krofynoops]> on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:55PM (#12530265) Journal
    ... is the answer to your question. Some people think HTML email is evil, some don't. So what to do? Give them a choice. A lot of mailing lists that I subscribe to offer subscribers a choice: plain text or HTML. Let your subscribers decide what they want.

    P.S. Suggestion: default to plain text because HTML is, in fact, evil.

  • Images (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bios_Hakr ( 68586 ) <xptical@gmEEEail.com minus threevowels> on Saturday May 14, 2005 @01:56PM (#12530272)
    If you are going to do it, make sure it looks OK without the images. My client gives me the option to load the images and, quite frankly, I never do.

    In e-mail, I want the content, not fucking bling-bling.

    If I wanted to SEE your product, I'd go you to your web site.

    And shit like company banners and the like just piss me off to no end.

    Finally, the tracker images. These, like read recipt, are of the devil. Read recipt is disabled in my client. My boss wants to know why I never read any of his e-mails. I tell him I do, but WHEN I read it is none of his fucking buisness.

    Same for you. If I catch you tracking when I open an e-mail using something like http:\\server\images\myemailaddy\blank.gif, you'll be filtered. In fact, if I get any kind of weird feeling about the e-mail at all, you'll be filtered.

    Make sure you understand that my client may be displayed in a preview frame. Don't expect me to open the item and maximixe it to read it. If it doesn't display properly in the frame, I won't scroll sideways to read it.

  • Multi-part (Score:5, Informative)

    by pbox ( 146337 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:01PM (#12530293) Homepage Journal
    Repeat after me:

    M U L T I P A R T

    Technology is your friend, even if you don't fell like making sense of rfc822. Send both in the same mail.

    And don't buy the spam filter argument. While it is true that multipart messages get consistently higher spam scores, if your content is not spammy you are A-OK. If your content is spammy you got a problem on your hand regardless of the TEXT/HTML issue.

    • Re:Multi-part (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gregmac ( 629064 )
      Agreed, multipart is definately a must.

      While it is true that multipart messages get consistently higher spam scores, if your content is not spammy you are A-OK

      Well, the reason they get higher spam scores is because spam software usually adds points for being html. There's also a few additional checks specific to html -- ie, more points are added for having multiple different colors. I believe spam assassin also adds points for HTML-only.

      Another thing to remember is how to use images .. I personally vie

    • Re:Multi-part (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bcrowell ( 177657 )
      Yeah, I'm baffled by all the posts talking as if the choice was whether to send plain text only, or html only. The biggest indicator of spam is if it's html-only. If I get an html-only e-mail from someone I don't know, it goes straight to the bitbucket. Although I use mutt, plenty of people who use html-capable mail readers simply set their software to display the plain text version, either because of security concerns, or because they don't want to wait 30 seconds for someone's message to download over a m

    • Re:Multi-part (Score:4, Funny)

      by pyrrhonist ( 701154 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @05:02PM (#12531390)
      M U L T I P A R T

      Korben Dallas: Yeah, multipart, she knows it's a multipart. Leeloo Dallas. This is my wife.
      Leeloo: Mul-ti-part.
      Korben Dallas: We're newlyweds. Just met. You know how it is. We bumped into each other, sparks happen...
      Leeloo: Mul-ti-part.
      Korben Dallas: Yes, she knows it's a multipart. Anyway, we're in love.

  • Yes (Score:3, Informative)

    by crmartin ( 98227 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:03PM (#12530308)
    I've got enough problems without worrying about weird-ass links and IE vulnerabilities. (Sadly, no, I can't avoid using MS products at work.)
    • Odd. Very odd. I never have these problems at work (100% Microsoft Products), and at home only when I visit porn sites in IE. Visit a lot of porn, do you? Really and honestly, it's not at all difficult to eliminate most spam and avoid most malicious code. It's sort of like sex: If you have unprotected computer, you may pick up a virus.
      • Really and honestly, if you run IE you're contantly chasing it. I just spent an hour on the phone helping a friend get rid of Sober.O.

        When I read my mail in EMACS on a Linux box, all that ever happens is I have new viral emails from friends with Windows to add to my collection.
        • Well, my employer must have an effective virus filter, than. Been a long time since the LAN Shop guys made any noise to us "users" about such issues. Dunno...
  • Why bulk email HTML newsletters? Send them a link to a page. You can have a number of different access controls on it if it's not supposed to be public, and get the advantage of logging page hits to see who's actually reading it.

    • Re:And this is .. wrong tool! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      So it's "wrong" that some people want to read stuff in their inbox? Whatever you say, Mr Computer Use Nazi.

      Nicely presented information will greatly increase the chance that people will click through. A bare link (probably broken in half by your old skool hardwrapping mailer) isn't going to generat much interest.

  • Use multipart/alternative (Score:3, Informative)

    by dimss ( 457848 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:16PM (#12530394) Homepage
    "multipart/alternative" is your friend.

    Only spammers send HTML-only messages these days. In two years, I have received only one useful HTML-only message. BTW, rejecting HTML-only messages is a good way to reduce amount of incoming spam.

    You can compose message in HTML and then use lynx to create text/plain part of message.

    • Re:Use multipart/alternative (Score:4, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:38PM (#12530542) Homepage Journal
      Oh bullshit. Maybe everybody you know sends text only messages. Most users are non-geeks who don't even know how.

      I used to work a help desk at an internet services company, where we had this brain-dead ticket system which was email based, and wasn't smart enough to filter dangerous attachments, so it would just display the raw MIME text. Yeah, I know, there are better ways, but I didn't design the software. My point is that I often had to eye-parse HTML message or find the pure-text part in multipart messages. How often did I have to do this? More than 90% of the time. And this was with a relatively tech-savy user base. Your "only spammers" assertion is pure crap.

      • Maybe everybody you know sends text only messages. Most users are non-geeks who don't even know how.
        Don't users actually have to try pretty hard in order to send an html-only e-mail? For instance, in yahoo's mail, I believe the options you can select in the web interface are text-only and html+text; html-only isn't even an option. Is there some popular webmail service or GUI mail app that encourages the user to send html-only mail?

  • "Evil" is bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @02:18PM (#12530400) Homepage Journal
    If you're going to get all religious, you should quit rather than use mass-mailing software, even for plain text messages. I mean, it's a spammer tool, right? How can you even consider using it?

    The right way to do ethics is to forget stupid dogmas like "HTML email is evil" and base your decisions how your actions affect other people. Like a lot of other technologies, HTML email can be misused; specifically, senders can breach security with script-based malware, and privacy with graphic-based tracking cookies. If you don't engage in these abuses yourself, where's the ethical issue?

    If you're concerned about security of your own users, you might tell them, "don't accept HTML email". But even that's serious overkill -- Thunderbird is perfectly capable of blocking security and privacy penetration while still accepting HTML email. Outlook is less impressive that way, but Microsoft software is hardly the gold standard for security.

    "HTML email is evil" is standard geek bigotry. We're able to get by with pure-text message, anybody who can't is an asshole. Its time to remember that the whole world doesn't revolve around us.

    • Re:"Evil" is bullshit (Score:4, Funny)

      by forkazoo ( 138186 ) <<wrosecrans> <at> <gmail.com>> on Saturday May 14, 2005 @06:53PM (#12532021) Homepage
      Okay, so the world doesn't revolve around us. But, HTML is still evil. Seriously. I work with some blind people. When email has images and stuff, the screen reader can't do anything with it. If all you want is bold face, and text formatting, then there probably isn't much point to bothering with HTML. People checking email on blackberries and cell phones and palm pilots is becoming a more popular phenomenon. Many companies turn off HTML mail for their users. (The one we use at the office turns it off by default, thank goodness.)

      If you want to use a 1x1 pixel web bug, then you are an ass hat. If you want to use javascript in email, you are an ass hat the size of a llama.

      And, when I was your age, I had to walk uphill to get email, all three ways.

      • Re:"Evil" is bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)

        by fm6 ( 162816 )
        You point out a bunch of ways HTML can be misused and you say its evil. That's absurd. If you want you don't want to screw over blind people, follow accessibility guidelines. If you think script malware and web bugs are wrong, don't use them.

        Sure there are people who read your email on portable devices that don't do formatting -- but they're still in the minority. By the time they're in the majority, they'll be perfectly good doing rich text, and you'll look like a dweeb if you don't learn how to support

  • Especially if your business depends on these e-mails (e.g. sales/marketing promotions), you might want to do a target focus of the e-mails on a sample group. This way, you can gather their feedback and not risk loss of sales.

    A colleague at work (in another office) sends daily 'reports' all HTML formatted. It takes so long to read the content of the e-mail because graphics overwhelm the acutal content.The first 20 lines or so is a giant graphic. So I just delete it.
  • I always try to send plain text, unless I need to do something specific. (I'll embed an image in HTML rather than attach the file to a plain text email, for example.)

    But I gave up mutt for evolution because so many people send me HTML mail. At some point you kind of have to live in the world as it exists, I think.

    I think the world would be a better place if email was just plain text, with file attachments, but most people don't agree, so what can you do?

    If you send HTML mail, almost everyone will be abl
  • I use KMail 1.8 and I have it configured to reject and delete all HTML mails. Probably I won't even notice it if you ever send me one. Businesses that use HTML mail ask for bankruptcy.

  • Pagers and Mobile devices. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @03:02PM (#12530681) Journal
    I get email and news alerts on my pager and phone, html versions are a pain in the ass.

    HTML does not belong in emails, unless its porn. ;)

  • What do your customers and Clients want? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Saturday May 14, 2005 @03:28PM (#12530802) Homepage
    Even though I default to text e-mail and turn off previews in my mail client, I also accept that HTML e-mail has pretty much become the default.

    I would suggest that your best option is to offer a choice of text or HTML, or if that seems unwieldy, to poll your client base for their preferences. If most of them want HTML, then that's what you should deliver to them

    Asking them first is a good move. It makes them feel that you care about their needs, and in the event that you do go with a regular HTML format it will reassure them that you are not sending something malicious.

    As is so often the case, this is a question of communication and marketing, not technology. Your choice, and how you implement it, should be determined by the needs or preferences of your clients, not by geekish outrage.

    Personally I prefer either a URL back to your site or to a PDF.
  • >. . . but is it now an outdated concern?

    No. There are plenty of reasons to avoid html email. Here's the one that may convince your boss: not everyone *can* read it, even today. At the very least, not everyone who is able to read it will be able to see the html formatting. One of the best things about plain text is that it forces you to format your message in a way that everyone will be able to read.

    There are a lot of people who will never see your formatted html: businessmen and geeks using cell
  • My suggestion, if your company wants to send nice HTML-based newsletters to customers, is to sign up with many of the opt-in e-mail solution providers like ExactTarget, SilverPop, etc. They make tools for this stuff and have folks who handle all of the deliverability stuff who can consul you.
  • The purpose of email is communication - never forget that.

    So, in order to answer the question "Is sending $FOO in email evil?" answer the question "Is sending $FOO communicating more than text/plain would?"

    If all you are communicating is "Don't park in the west parking lot tomorrow because we are going to repaint the lines" then an HTML mail does not communicate any more than a text mail, and so is a bad idea.

    If you are communicating "Don't park in the highlighted area <img=foo.gif> because we will
  • Most of the proponents of Text-only email commonly ignore usability as a factor in their arguments.

    Quite simply, HTML allows for newsletters (and even normal correspondence) to be displayed in a more readable fashion than a text email would be. Ask anyone in the publishing world and they will tell you that a good layout is vital. Many HTML newsletters make good use of columns and colored headings and such.....

    And of course, for normal plain email correspondance, bold, italics, underlines, bulleted lists
    • Most of the proponents of Text-only email commonly ignore usability as a factor in their arguments.

      On the contrary: one of the most annoying things about html email is that it's typically far less readable than the equivalent plain-text email.

      The reason is that most clients handle it quite badly by doing such things as forcing the font choice (overriding the default font, which the user has explicitly chosen to be readable), substituting flashy graphics for more readable (but more boring) textual conven
    • Most of the proponents of Text-only email commonly ignore usability as a factor in their arguments.

      Ironically, most of them also rely on usability as the most important factor in their arguments.

    • Quite simply, HTML allows for newsletters (and even normal correspondence) to be displayed in a more readable fashion than a text email would be.

      I'm sure the marketing morons at my employer think the same. However, they'd probably think it less if they realised that the standard masthead they attach to all our "from the CEO" reports displayed slightly differently in several common mail clients that don't start with the letters "MS O", with unfortunate consequences for the caption under his photograph.

  • Generally, formatting and graphics help communication. Fonts, graphics, layout, whatever. Ever try to read a man-page and wish that there was some sensible formatting and highlighting? Would Slashdot be useable if it was pure text only? How about the formatting of your newspaper or textbook?

    Several years ago there were legitimate worries about client support for HTML email. There were also worries about viruses. For me at least, those days are long gone.

    The biggest problem is people abusing HTML e

  • It makes it so easy to filter out the crap. Even better when it includes likes to images! No way am I going to let an email message link back to some server and let the spammer know that he found a real address.

  • Spam Debate (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kalak ( 260968 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @04:42PM (#12531256) Homepage Journal
    Wondering if HTML will make your message look like spam? Well, I know I'd go here:
    http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_0_x.html [apache.org] and search on the html related tests and their scores.
    They should tell you what the anti-spam community considers "evil".

    I don't see a need for html mail - you want it to look a certain way, give me a blurb to get my interest and then link to the content. My friends do this with interesting links, newsletters I get are like this, I even view Slashdot on the "light" mode to get rid of as much of the clutter as possible. Then I go the the links to see more if I care to.
    • this is exactly what i was going to suggest, but you beat me to it.

      html email is really a waste of bandwidth. do what acm does: email out a quick summary with links, and i'll go peruse as my fancy takes me. no need to waste all that extra bandwidth with formatting (or cpu time with compression). almost all html email that gets sent to me is immediately whisked away to my trash can (there are a few people who i actually want to hear from that still insist on sending html email, there are exceptions to my fi
  • Forget HTML -- most people have enough trouble sending well-formatted plain text messages! Again, Outlook Express is at least half the problem.

  • Yes (Score:2)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) *
    HTML email still renders unpredictably and is heavily used by spammers. Due to Outlook's inability to not fetch linked images (and frequent security issues), at work we filter all HTML email down to plain text using MailScanner (it's easier than getting people to switch from Outlook).
    • Due to Outlook's inability to not fetch linked images...

      Please stop with the FUD. In OL2003, it's off by default. In previous versions, it's easy to turn it off.

      • Well, we're not running 2k3, and if it's even possible to disable in prior versions, I've not discovered how (and I've looked pretty hard).

        I note you don't question my security concerns.

  • If you properly MIME encode the email, and provide a plain text alternative, you don't have to care whether or not the recipients will be able to receive it.

    Honestly, you've got more to worry about with AOL thinking everything under the sun is spam (seriously, they're a big problem for legitimate mailers).

  • My Boss . . . (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tengu1sd ( 797240 )
    My boss is pretty adamant. . .

    That says it all. You can present your ideas for consideration, if you work for the type who's willing to accept the input without marking you as a rebelious sot who need to be taught a lesson. But after the discussion, either take the check and do the work or find another job. If you aren't willing to shut up and carry on with the company plan, you can be replaced by one of several Microsoft programs.

    Not that I'm trying to slam you, I read html mail as text on my perso

  • Non-computer geeks like HTML (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I do a weekly salesflyer email that reachs about 70000 people that are interested in DIY speaker building and pro sound(ie, technical but not necessarily computer-savy). about 99.9% of them choose to get the html version, even though about 10% of them have mailreaders that mangle it enough that they use the "Click here if everything is messed up" link I put at the top.

    It's not terribly graphics heavy, the main reason is for layout & product pictures, plus the ease of having links instead of having to

  • No. (Score:3, Funny)

    by DaoudaW ( 533025 ) on Saturday May 14, 2005 @11:57PM (#12533550)
    Google does html mail. Google doesn't do evil. Therefore html mail is not evil.
  • I have procmail setup to filter all messages that are content type text/html directly to the spam box. It doesn't get read.

    However, if you send a multipart/alternative message with a text/html section AND a text/plain section, it is likely to make it to my inbox.

    Oh, and don't try to be sneaky and send a multipart/alternative without a text/plain section. That gets filtered too.

    See RFC 1521 and RFC 2046.

    -molo

  • PDF? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by darnok ( 650458 ) on Sunday May 15, 2005 @06:20AM (#12534602)
    My guess is that your boss wants to send HTML email for the presentation benefits - it can look COOL!

    I filter out HTML email, so if I was one of your customers, I wouldn't ever see it. However, if you sent me a PDF file, with a covering message in plain email text, then I'd be much more likely to read the PDF. Furthermore, unlike HTML, PDF layout can be specified in such a way that it will appear ~identical on all systems.

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