I'm not trying to stir up an argument here, but why do people hate HTML mail so much? Most modern mail tools display HTML just fine, and the overhead needed to send a bulkier mail message is negligible.
I'm one of these people that use multiple mail clients, depending on which box I'm using, and it really doesn't matter to me. Although I send mail mails plain text, it never bothers me when I receive HTML mail.
Just curious as to how people feel about it.
-Mark
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On 16-Feb-07 Mark Ridley wrote:
I'm not trying to stir up an argument here, but why do people hate HTML mail so much? Most modern mail tools display HTML just fine, and the overhead needed to send a bulkier mail message is negligible.
I'm one of these people that use multiple mail clients, depending on which box I'm using, and it really doesn't matter to me. Although I send mail mails plain text, it never bothers me when I receive HTML mail.
Just curious as to how people feel about it.
-Mark
Well (and not trying to encourage a potentially civilised discussion into an argument either), I have various negative reactions to HTML mail.
1. My mail client (which is not all that nodern ... ) is designed primarily for plain text. An HTML attachment can be displayed by invoking a supplementary program to read it; I use lynx, because it is fast for this purpose (as opposed to a browser type program which is sluggish for this kind of thing) -- but then any "enhancements" in the HTML will not be displayed as intended.
2. Most people who send HTML mail don't need to, since their messages are usually in essence plain text anyway.
3. If they send the message as HTML in the body *plus* the same as an attachment, then I can run lynx on the attachment and read the text. But if it's a message with HTML in the body, and no attachment, then it's almost unreadable, since what appears in the message window shows all the HTML tags literally. If the message is important, then I'll take the trouble to edit out all these tags and and up with the plain text that I would have preferred to receive in the first place. If it's not that important ....
4. I'm less against mails which have a plain text body and the HTML version in an attchment, since I can then read the plain text without extra effort, just as if it had been sent simply as plain text, and ignore the attachment.
However, I find that a message which (including headers) comes to say 2-3K bytes as plain text, will be 10-12K or more[*] if it has an HTML attachment. If I want to save it, then it will take up much more disk space than it should. In the long run, believe it or not, this matters! (For example, over the years I have accumulated 975MB of saved mail, on a disk which currently has 5GB free space left. If that were all HTML mail, there'd probably be no free disk space).
[*] For example, an email I received this evening (with text body duplicated as HTML attachment) has:
Total size: 83613 bytes of which:
HTML attachment: 64684 bytes
Plain text body: 15546 bytes
Headers: 3383 bytes
So the HTML occupies 77% of the entire message (including headers), or 80% without headers. The meaningful part is only 18.5% of the whole.
Now that I've sussed out the above, I will now do what I always do in these case -- delete the HTML attachment. Result:
Total size: 18756 bytes of which:
Plain text body: 15391
Headers: 3365 bytes
The meaningful part is now 83% of the whole.
(Note how both plain text body and headers have gone down in size, owing to eliminating MIME headers and separators).
In summary: HTML mail causes at best inconvenience and extra work, and is a waste of space. It can also (if HTML body with or without attachment) cause frustration and a lot of extra work (if I really want to read the message), or irritation and deletion (if I'm not that bothered about it).
However, I note with pleasure that you are a civilised person who routinely sends messages in plain text!
All best wishes, Ted.
PS I have nothing against sending mail with HTML attachements, or attachments of other kinds, if that is necessary in order to communicate what needs to be communicated. My points above are in the context of HTML which adds nothing, except perhaps eye-candy, to the real message.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 16-Feb-07 Time: 19:36:36 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 18:39 +0000, Mark Ridley wrote:
I'm not trying to stir up an argument here, but why do people hate HTML mail so much? Most modern mail tools display HTML just fine, and the overhead needed to send a bulkier mail message is negligible.
If you want to wrap the text in html tags to do stuff with formatting then so be it (as long as you also include a plaintext version in case I am trying to read it on something that doesn't support HTML)
I have no particular dislike for the capability , just for the way it is frequently used.
Things like (in no particular order)
Amateurish email stationary (I mean if I wanted a message to look like it was written on a page of a ring-bound notepad I would have modified my email client to render it that way) The formatting of an email message is inconsequential to it's content so what are people trying to achieve ? I just want to read my messages in the most coherent and legible format.
It was one of the best vectors for both spam harvesting (or at least verifying valid addresses) and viruses for a while. Why would anyone ever have thought it was a good idea to add the capability to execute stuff or download external images in a messaging system. Particularly when this can happen without user interaction in the preview pane.
Email that looks like a minime version of the senders website, complete with corporate branding/logos etc. Provide a link to the site in the sig if you want. Then I can take a look when I have the time to browse the content at my leisure, wrapping your message up in loads of other content just makes it harder for me to read what you are saying.
But mostly...where does it end ? How about embedding flash objects in email. A nice spinny corporate logo thing ? Perhaps a link to a youtube vid as my signature ? Perhaps even render the whole text as a flash object so that it has some "cute" effect like glinting in the sun..best add some music too that starts to play when you open the email :-)
Phew..thanks for giving me the opportunity to vent that lot, I feel loads better now.
PS. whilst we are on the subject of email do you expect whoever manages the list archives to make sure your message is not archived ? As the disclaimer at the bottom seems to not allow it to be put in a public archive (or at least if it is nobody outside the list is allowed to read it) *grin*
Honestly I am not having a dig there, just thought it would be fun to point out why I am also not a fan of mail disclaimers.
Also why are they always at the bottom ? If you are not the intended recipient by the time you have got to the bit that says you were not supposed to read the message it is too late.
On Fri, 16 Feb 2007, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
PS. whilst we are on the subject of email do you expect whoever manages the list archives to make sure your message is not archived ? As the disclaimer at the bottom seems to not allow it to be put in a public archive (or at least if it is nobody outside the list is allowed to read it) *grin*
Haha you got me there! :)
I have to admit that's just a standard cut and paste, I really must revise that, it's primarily for my wife's business, I really couldn't care if anyone reads my mails or not, the ones that I don't want people to read I encrypt! :)
Cheers.
-Mark
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Mark Ridley wrote:
On Fri, 16 Feb 2007, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
PS. whilst we are on the subject of email do you expect whoever manages the list archives to make sure your message is not archived ? As the disclaimer at the bottom seems to not allow it to be put in a public archive (or at least if it is nobody outside the list is allowed to read it) *grin*
Haha you got me there! :)
I have to admit that's just a standard cut and paste, I really must revise that, it's primarily for my wife's business, I really couldn't care if anyone reads my mails or not, the ones that I don't want people to read I encrypt! :)
Personally, I strongly suspect these are unenforcable. They are an attempt to make a recipient responsible for an error on the part of the sender - it is an involuntary contract (I think that's the term they use to describe it) and in the UK at least, unenforcable.
Ian
On 2/17/07, Ian bell ianbell@ukfsn.org wrote:
Personally, I strongly suspect these are unenforcable. They are an attempt to make a recipient responsible for an error on the part of the sender - it is an involuntary contract (I think that's the term they use to describe it) and in the UK at least, unenforcable.
My place of work decreed email disclaimers as useless last year. Recent changes in the law means instead we have to have the company address and company registration number. Simple.
Regards, Tim.
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Ian bell -
Mark Ridley -
ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood