5 ms·

Neither you nor the poster provide a reason why. Why is it better? How does plain text make it faster to respond? Or even faster to read?

by josho 7y ago

zepolen 7y ago
images loading..2% images loading..15% images loading..29% images loading..42% images loading..58% images loading..74% images loading..89% images loading..100% ____________________________________ | | | O O | | O | | \_/ | | MY LOGO | | My catchphrase | | | | | | | |------------------------------------| | | | Hi josho! | | | | This is why it's slower to read! | | | |____________________________________|
- bwat49 7y ago
  A decent email client will load images asynchronously. Many can also be configured to not load remote content at all until you allow it.
  - zepolen 7y ago
    So loading the text part of emails only. That's precisely the topic of discussion.
    - snowwrestler 7y ago
      HTML loads even if images do not, which means you still get formatting, bolding, font sizes, clickable links, tables, etc.
    - a3n 7y ago
      That may be the reason for some people. I disallow loading images until I click, for security and privacy reasons. But I want to see pictures of my aunt's dog if she sends it.
    - yyyk 7y ago
      Loading asynchronously != not loading at all. Asking for permission before rendering external images != not loading at all, even though we could live without external images and just include everything inline.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  This isn't a thing, which makes me think you're arguing in bad faith. Clients load images asynchronously, and no personal email is sent with a logo and catchphrase header. I've never seen that in my entire life and I've been using email with a lot of people, for a long time. Formatting is an issue however, and the addition of formatting to email can be useful and add to the conversation. To take the hn example again, the text portion of your comment is broken on mobile because hn doesn't support proper formatting. This has made your comment harder to read.
  - zepolen 7y ago
    So you have never received a message like this in your inbox. No notifications from various services/companies you use on a daily basis. Who's arguing in bad faith again?
    - jefftk 7y ago
      The post is arguing that individuals should switch to sending traditional plain text email, and recommending mail clients that support it well. Yes, many companies make painful HTML emails, but that's orthagonal to this discussion.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    I'm not the original poster however I do believe that the guidelines say to assume good faith. >Clients load images asynchronously Many clients actually don't load images by default for privacy reasons requiring another click. Even if not one reasonably assumes that the image may be relevant and waits for it to load. Half the planet also has a pretty slow connection. >To take the hn example again, the text portion of your comment is broken on mobile You see the whole thing either turn your phone sideways or scroll sideways.
- tomp 7y ago
  Your comment is plain text and it's terrible to read. So if anything, you're making the opposite point!
masukomi 7y ago
it's 99% psychological but I also 100% agree. Just posted a top level comment about how it has absolutely changed my life with regards to email. If you're having trouble keeping up with email and aren't afraid of the command line i _highly_ recommend using a cli client. Neomutt is a bitch to set up because there aren't any good action oriented docs, but it's been worth every bit of effort. There are other clients that are much easier to set up (like alpine) but neomutt has so much power and for me being able to write in markdown and convert to HTML for normal folks was a requirement. the 1% that isn't psychological is how much faster _everything_ is when dealing with a plaintext client (neomutt in my case). "Power Users" use the keyboard to navigate gmail. Normal (neo)mutt users use those _all_ the time and they're faster because there's so much less for the computer to do with each keystroke.
jeffalyanak 7y ago
A well formatted html email has the potential to be much more readable than any plaintext one. The issues come in execution. I find that a very large percentage of the html email I receive is actually hurting readability by way of formatting. On top of that, a sizable percentage who send html email fail to take accessibility into account and leave out important elements like alt tags.
- bachmeier 7y ago
  > I find that a very large percentage of the html email I receive is actually hurting readability by way of formatting. This is exactly right. In principle, html is just as convenient, but in practice it regularly fails. Something I really hate is a message with big images that add nothing. If I have to scan a message to figure out what's being said, there's a high probability I will leave it for later, which means it never gets read at all.
scbrg 7y ago
I would say that the real performance drain is top posting, which seems to go hand in hand with HTML emails. With top posting, in order to read a mail - especially one that is a few levels deep in a thread - becomes an exercise in jumping back and forth, trying to find context and make sense of who replies to what, finding relevant sentences (often hidden in a mess of signatures). With bottom posting and proper curated quoting, context is a glance away, and it's easy to see who said what in reply to what. I'm sure this would be possible with HTML mails as well, but I've never seen it happen. It's all just a mess of hard to find information in the least sensible order imaginable.
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in email?
  - kilburn 7y ago
    > Q. Why is top-posting such a bad thing? It is not, so long as you first quote the relevant part you are replying to. At some point you can also trim the tail as you see fit (I don't find it necessary because my mail client does a good enogh job at hiding that part unless I click on a "show wverything" button. > 2019-07-24 10:50 earthboundkid wrote: > Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? >> 2019-07-23 23:55 someonelse wrote: >> A: Top-posting. >>> 2019-07-23 22:00 first guy wrote: >>> Q: What is the most annoying thing in email?
    - adtac 7y ago
      That's called interleaved posting and it's the preferred style: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_styl...
      - kilburn 7y ago
        I stand corrected. Technically it appears that I'm advocating for a combination of inline and top posting. Quoting the relevant wikipedia part: > The interleaved reply style can also be combined with top-posting: selected points are quoted and replied to, as above, and then a full copy of the original message is appended.

Neither you nor the poster provide a reason why. Why is it better? How does plain text make it faster to respond? Or even faster to read?

by josho 7y ago

Neither you nor the poster provide a reason why. Why is it better? How does plain text make it faster to respond? Or even faster to read?

zepolen 7y ago

images loading..2% images loading..15% images loading..29% images loading..42% images loading..58% images loading..74% images loading..89% images loading..100% ____________________________________ | | | O O | | O | | \_/ | | MY LOGO | | My catchphrase | | | | | | | |------------------------------------| | | | Hi josho! | | | | This is why it's slower to read! | | | |____________________________________|

bwat49 7y ago
A decent email client will load images asynchronously. Many can also be configured to not load remote content at all until you allow it.
- zepolen 7y ago
  So loading the text part of emails only. That's precisely the topic of discussion.
  - snowwrestler 7y ago
    HTML loads even if images do not, which means you still get formatting, bolding, font sizes, clickable links, tables, etc.
  - a3n 7y ago
    That may be the reason for some people. I disallow loading images until I click, for security and privacy reasons. But I want to see pictures of my aunt's dog if she sends it.
  - yyyk 7y ago
    Loading asynchronously != not loading at all. Asking for permission before rendering external images != not loading at all, even though we could live without external images and just include everything inline.
scrollaway 7y ago
This isn't a thing, which makes me think you're arguing in bad faith. Clients load images asynchronously, and no personal email is sent with a logo and catchphrase header. I've never seen that in my entire life and I've been using email with a lot of people, for a long time. Formatting is an issue however, and the addition of formatting to email can be useful and add to the conversation. To take the hn example again, the text portion of your comment is broken on mobile because hn doesn't support proper formatting. This has made your comment harder to read.
- zepolen 7y ago
  So you have never received a message like this in your inbox. No notifications from various services/companies you use on a daily basis. Who's arguing in bad faith again?
  - jefftk 7y ago
    The post is arguing that individuals should switch to sending traditional plain text email, and recommending mail clients that support it well. Yes, many companies make painful HTML emails, but that's orthagonal to this discussion.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  I'm not the original poster however I do believe that the guidelines say to assume good faith. >Clients load images asynchronously Many clients actually don't load images by default for privacy reasons requiring another click. Even if not one reasonably assumes that the image may be relevant and waits for it to load. Half the planet also has a pretty slow connection. >To take the hn example again, the text portion of your comment is broken on mobile You see the whole thing either turn your phone sideways or scroll sideways.
tomp 7y ago
Your comment is plain text and it's terrible to read. So if anything, you're making the opposite point!

masukomi 7y ago

it's 99% psychological but I also 100% agree. Just posted a top level comment about how it has absolutely changed my life with regards to email. If you're having trouble keeping up with email and aren't afraid of the command line i _highly_ recommend using a cli client. Neomutt is a bitch to set up because there aren't any good action oriented docs, but it's been worth every bit of effort. There are other clients that are much easier to set up (like alpine) but neomutt has so much power and for me being able to write in markdown and convert to HTML for normal folks was a requirement. the 1% that isn't psychological is how much faster _everything_ is when dealing with a plaintext client (neomutt in my case). "Power Users" use the keyboard to navigate gmail. Normal (neo)mutt users use those _all_ the time and they're faster because there's so much less for the computer to do with each keystroke.

jeffalyanak 7y ago

A well formatted html email has the potential to be much more readable than any plaintext one. The issues come in execution. I find that a very large percentage of the html email I receive is actually hurting readability by way of formatting. On top of that, a sizable percentage who send html email fail to take accessibility into account and leave out important elements like alt tags.

bachmeier 7y ago
> I find that a very large percentage of the html email I receive is actually hurting readability by way of formatting. This is exactly right. In principle, html is just as convenient, but in practice it regularly fails. Something I really hate is a message with big images that add nothing. If I have to scan a message to figure out what's being said, there's a high probability I will leave it for later, which means it never gets read at all.

scbrg 7y ago

I would say that the real performance drain is top posting, which seems to go hand in hand with HTML emails. With top posting, in order to read a mail - especially one that is a few levels deep in a thread - becomes an exercise in jumping back and forth, trying to find context and make sense of who replies to what, finding relevant sentences (often hidden in a mess of signatures). With bottom posting and proper curated quoting, context is a glance away, and it's easy to see who said what in reply to what. I'm sure this would be possible with HTML mails as well, but I've never seen it happen. It's all just a mess of hard to find information in the least sensible order imaginable.

earthboundkid 7y ago
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in email?
- kilburn 7y ago
  > Q. Why is top-posting such a bad thing? It is not, so long as you first quote the relevant part you are replying to. At some point you can also trim the tail as you see fit (I don't find it necessary because my mail client does a good enogh job at hiding that part unless I click on a "show wverything" button. > 2019-07-24 10:50 earthboundkid wrote: > Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? >> 2019-07-23 23:55 someonelse wrote: >> A: Top-posting. >>> 2019-07-23 22:00 first guy wrote: >>> Q: What is the most annoying thing in email?
  - adtac 7y ago
    That's called interleaved posting and it's the preferred style: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_styl...
    - kilburn 7y ago
      I stand corrected. Technically it appears that I'm advocating for a combination of inline and top posting. Quoting the relevant wikipedia part: > The interleaved reply style can also be combined with top-posting: selected points are quoted and replied to, as above, and then a full copy of the original message is appended.