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It's tempting to make shouldiemail.com and just answer "No" for all these features. Seriously though, it must be years between every time I see an HTML email wh
by l0b0 5y ago
It's tempting to make shouldiemail.com and just answer "No" for all these features. Seriously though, it must be years between every time I see an HTML email which would not have been improved by being plain text.
- nxpnsv 5y agoHTML e-mail fill an important function. If it's html, it's a promotion and it gets trashed...
- Mandatum 5y agoAnything that's more visual than function, like fashion or trendy design - text is a waste of time. Email serves every type of business, yes more could be just text - but some will never be served by that format.
- swiley 5y agoAnything more visual than function shouldn't be clogging up my inbox.
- SilverRed 5y agoWhat the average HN user and the average user want is worlds apart. The average person likes their emails to be nicely designed like a website with blocks of colour and the site logos. When they see a plain text email from a site they would be more likely to think they are being scammed than to be impressed at its simplicity and ability to display in the terminal. When every website is hacking around broken table layouts to get them to render in outlook (essentially Word), something is wrong and should be fixed.
- badsectoracula 5y agoHow do you know that is what the average person likes or what they think? Are there any studies for these?
- lstamour 5y ago> Now, with the emphasis on imagery across the web, users strongly preferred images that could be seen full screen or at a larger scale, looked high-quality, and showed detail clearly. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/newsletters/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/newsletters/ (2017)
- MereInterest 5y agoThat article seems positively rife with weird assumptions, all to present email marketing in a favorable light. It's bad enough that I don't really trust the quote you gave from it. > Because several of these constraints have been remedied over the years, many of the concerns that users had about subscribing have disappeared. Read: Because we stopped asking permission and instead started spamming everybody who gave us their email address, people stopped thinking that not subscribing had any effect. > The increase in sheer email volume over the years has created a scenario where people can’t possibly give all messages their full attention, so they care less about what they receive because they know they can easily ignore the noise or choose what they invest their time in. Read: Our entire industry spams people so much that people know it's not worth reading. > It’s no longer used strictly to describe unsolicited email messages. Participants in our study used the word “spam” to describe solicited marketing emails that they considered random, impersonal, irrelevant, with too much promotional hype, or coming in high volume. Read: We required an email address for things that don't need one, then treated that as permission. How dare people consider our spam to be spam? > Now that organizations are required to include an Unsubscribe link in their newsletters, this task has become easier. If a company assumes that an email address given for identification can be used for marketing, or that it can be shared with third-parties/affiliates for marketing, then they are already pretty shady. I honestly have no way of knowing whether it's an actual Unsubscribe link, or whether it's a signal that the email address is actively read by a human and so should receive more spam. > If users keep getting unwanted newsletters, the messages will start to backfire and become regular reminders that they’re annoyed with your company. Better to let them go. This part I do agree with. Better still would be to not assume permission to send marketing to somebody just because there was a pre-checked both on a form.
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- OptionX 5y agoThats what the average web dev thinks the average person wants.
- brutal_chaos_ 5y agoAnd thus is what people have come to expect, sadly, IMHO. Except for the technically inclined/HN userbase. Though another comment said Germans prefer plaintext emails w/o attachments.
- zaarn 5y agoWouldn't say that is entirely true. Germans prefer HTML mail that amounts to simple rich text, ie bold and italic fonts, possibly some color highlighting if you're really daring. Pure plaintext isn't that well appreciated.
- iamacyborg 5y ago> Except for the technically inclined/HN userbase. This community is as much an echo chamber as anywhere else. Just because an opinion is common here doesn't mean it's correct or reflects the wider population.
- Jiocus 5y agoBeauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others. - Hume, D § https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/#ObjSub https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/#ObjSub
- cwhy 5y agoA commercial project aims for profit, not public service. The previous post explains why they are popular demands. And it is natural for commercial project to satisfy popular demands.
- dredmorbius 5y agoQED: Beauty ≡ Profit
- na85 5y ago>The average person likes their emails to be nicely designed like a website with blocks of colour and the site logos. I really don't think that that's true.
- jgwil2 5y agoThis isn't an argument, it's merely contradiction!
- bosswipe 5y agoBoth the assertion and the contradiction are equally baseless.
- dredmorbius 5y agoNo it isn't! https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=xpAvcGcEc0k https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=xpAvcGcEc0k
- door101 5y ago> What the average HN user and the average user want is worlds apart. The average person likes their emails to be nicely designed like a website with blocks of colour and the site logos. Taste is generated. Cool trendy startups make "nicely designed" emails, users come to expect that. If scam emails looked "nicely designed" and Google sent emails in plaintext, the "nicely designed" emails would be considered untrustworthy. As a counterpoint, an "average user" wants software to work, and forcing every email client to parse HTML (which is far outside the scope of what an email client should do, especially with html as complex as it is today) often breaks things in unexpected ways. In my opinion, html and plaintext are both inappropriate for email. HTML is far too complex, and plaintext is a bit too simple. I think a markdown-like syntax would be the best balance, but I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed.
- userbinator 5y agoOne oddity I've noticed is that Germans seem to like their emails in plain text, and without any attachments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15226022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15226022 I've corresponded with others, also German, and they had the same preferences, even if not as explicitly stated as the examples in my other comment there.
- Semaphor 5y agoWe used to have our German newsletter available in plain text and styled. The vast majority of people chose the styled version. Not even 1 % picked text. No dark patterns involved, a simple radiobox. We do not offer the text version anymore.
- roydivision 5y agoI posit that the average user doesn't want to put the time into reading plain text to find out if the email is worth their attention, images and colours are easier and quicker to process. A lot of information can be communicated quickly with some photos and a nicely formatted graphically rich message, probably with a large link button that takes the user to a relevant web page for further engagement. This is not an endorsement of the practice, just an observation.
- smsm42 5y agoBut do they really? Most those "nicely designed" emails, to be honest, are spam. Either outright spam, like v14g4 and p3n1s pills (modern mail systems deal with those well enough), or only slightly more respectable spam like "you bought in our store once, so now we will hound you forever with ads for our good and services that you don't need anymore". Among this sea of garbage, there are rare islands of useful updates - like genuine newsletters I subscribed to, or email from my doctor about test results, or reminder from my bank that they are going to deduct that car payment, whether I like it or not, so there better be money there, etc. And of course Amazon shipping notifications! If all those need any HTML, then only the most rudimentary one. Of course, if you asked a user whether they'd want to get ugly marketing spam or beautiful one, I guess they'd choose the beautiful one. But that's not the right thing to ask.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cerved 5y agoyes, they do
- jjav 5y ago> Most those "nicely designed" emails, to be honest, are spam. Indeed. The number of HTML elements in an email scales pretty linearly with the probability of it being spam. Plain text is almost 100% certain not spam.
- mijamo 5y agoMy experience is opposite. I have never received a scam email with HTML, is always plaintext that tried to mimic a regular conversation.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoYou must have a hell of a spam filter.
- SirHound 5y ago
- kevsim 5y agoFully agree. When we launched our service, we used really simple plain text mails and we had users complaining that they looking unprofessional and spammy. We didn't go crazy with our email design, and we're certainly not pushing the limits of what's possible to use in an email, but just adding a bit of color, a log and some text formatting made a big difference. Haven't heard a complaint since.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- varjag 5y agoFrom what I've seen from average user, they tend to struggle pasting text with the same font into their email reply, struggle to quote parts of the message or email hyperlinks in usable manner.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago> What the average HN user and the average user want is worlds apart. The average person likes their emails to be nicely designed like a website with blocks of colour and the site logos. Do they? Do they really like it? Did anyone actually asked? And no, A/B testing your design's capability to trick the user into paying you money isn't measuring whether they like it or not. I have an alternative proposal: average user just accepts what they're given, because they have no other choice. Nobody listens to their opinion (again, tracking and telemetry is not the same as listening to people). Abusive designs and patterns are adopted industry-wide very quickly, so there's rarely an opportunity for the user to vote with their wallet - after all, they can't choose something that's not available in the first place. On top of that, the average user lacks the mental models and language to conceptualize what is wrong and how much better technology could be if it was slightly less abusive. All they can do is accept that computers are annoying, and casually complain about this to friends and family.
- watwut 5y ago> Do they? Do they really like it? Did anyone actually asked? Oh yeah, they do like it and want it. That is why they use it. And yes, I talked with a guy who was literally like "I like the emails colorful and such, but we found through testing developers respond better to plain, so I send plain to them". Sometimes we are the odd ones and that is ok.
- oblio 5y agoUsers want nice shapes and color. There's a reason the most popular media is video and images and the main social media platforms are practically platforms for sharing video and images. The average person all over all the world is almost functionally illiterate (literacy level of a middle schooler or maybe high schooler, at best). They really, really don't want text. They'll only read as much as they have to, and they will definitely choose images over text if they can.
- libertine 5y agoI don't even think it's a matter of liking or disliking, but more a matter of being blind to the standard formatting (something that most deal with on their jobs). At the end of the day if you see another blob of text, you either skim through it looking for what matters or you just delete/archive it. They could even hate it, but it just stands out for better and worst.
- GuB-42 5y agoI looked at the mail I really wanted to read from the most reputable entities (banks, government, business partners,...). Usually there is a logo at the top and the rest is mostly plain text with minimal formatting. A nice, colorful email, sometimes from the same companies usually mean one thing: ad. This is no different from snail mail, where important communication is usually on standard white paper while ads are high quality prints on nice goossy paper. And obviously, "average users" notice the pattern. Just like my father who almost trashed an important tax-related mail just because it looked too nice, he thought it was an ad. So the "average user" prefer to see nice ads, I can get that. But what the average user really prefers no ads at all.
- gumby 5y agoWhat’s lame is when there is no plaintext alternative. A clear sign of someone who does not wish to communicate with me.
- upofadown 5y agoIt at least implies a certain lack of technical expertise on the part of organizations that send such HTML only emails. The same for when they put completely unformated garbage in the text part. If W3M can do a better job starting with their HTML email you have to ask yourself why they couldn't of done at least that instead of whatever they did.
- tomjen3 5y agoIf it was sent personally to you by somebody who knew your preference you might be right, but realistically the number of people who cares or who have any issue with HTML mails is going to be sub 0.1%, so it is almost certainly more a case of don't care, not worth considering.
- codetrotter 5y ago> What’s lame is when there is no plaintext alternative. Or worse yet, when the plaintext alternative version is broken/incomplete. I regularly receive mail where the plaintext alternative version has templating variable names instead of actual values, where the html version has the values. Also, systems that send mail where the plaintext alternative version is only something along the lines of “Your email client does not support HTML. Please read this newsletter at” and then a link. But of course, my client can read html too, I just have it set to view the plaintext version by default. One of these days I will probably just set it to always prefer the html version instead. I use mutt, with elinks taking care of html to plain text conversion. I’ve been running my mail server for years. But anyways it might soon be time for me to switch to hosted mail. I have a provider in mind.
- citrin_ru 5y agoSometimes plain text alternative is so bad that one forced to use HTML version anyway. I've tried plain text emails in Atlassian Jira settings - emails it sends are badly formatted and have lots of empty lines, likely they make plaintext version from HTML one with something like `lynx --dump`.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoLove plaintext but meanwhile, even in tech, people are sending more newsletters than ever
- chiefalchemist 5y agoNot sure about every HTML being plain text but I do wish I had $20 for every overly image heavy email that has no meaning what so ever unless I do "show images." Don't brands understand a fair number of ppl have their email client *not* display images by default?
- tomjen3 5y agoUnless you are using Mutt or similar I don't think anybody does not show images by default. I know thunderbird has no problem showing me images that are included in the email. Remote images are a crime, break the ability to search ofline or keep a record of ones conversation but they have one key advantage for brands which is to spy on you.
- slaymaker1907 5y agoMy corporate Outlook email client does not show images by default if the sender is external.
- tomjen3 5y agoEven if those images are embedded in the email?
- opan 5y agoRainloop web client used by Disroot and some others defaults to not showing images and needs you to click a button to display them. IIRC Protonmail is the same in its webmail. The only non-web client I've used much in recent years is aerc, which is basically covered under "mutt" in this case.
- donio 5y agoThe GNKSA was the real deal. It was for Usenet but a lot of it applies to email too. https://web.archive.org/web/20160417105503/http://www.gnksa.org/gnksa.txt https://web.archive.org/web/20160417105503/http://www.gnksa....
- FredPret 5y agoAlmost every day, I find myself sending and receiving screenshots placed in context with some text and bullet points. Dare I say it: I love HTML emails
- Dylan16807 5y agoYou're against bold, italics, underline? Headings? Any image support at all?
- beermonster 5y agoYou mean bold, /italics/, and _underline_ ? Sure :)
- Dylan16807 5y agoThose are just ascii characters. You really don't want them to touch the font? (If your client interprets them, then you're not actually asking for plain text anymore.)
- dredmorbius 5y agoIf the client chooses to interpret them, then the point of control is where it should be.
- Dylan16807 5y agoWe still want to standardize it, though, right? Instead of a dozen different ad-hoc interpretations of the same message? Making it unobtrusive enough to still look good when uninterpreted is a good goal. But that's very different from having nothing at all.
- dredmorbius 5y agoThere's a very small set of text decorations which would suit virtually all cases. And there was a long history (about 100 years) of monospaced, mono-sized, typographic conventions based on typewriters and cheap reproduction (carbon paper, spirit duplicators, xerography), before the desktop-publishing era brought us out of that in the 1980s. The problem with formatting is that, like Johnny Rocco in Key Largo, someone always wants more, and not for your benefit but theirs.[1] #ThisIsWhyWeCannotHaveNiceThings https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27114500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27114500 In the Web world, counter to an argument elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27113404 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27113404), my experience is that Web design isn't the solution, Web design is the problem. Straight ASCII text (via w3m or other text-mode browsers), or Reader Mode (where supported) is vastly preferable to many, many nines worth of sites' prescribed designs. One thought I've had is that user agents could provide, at user discretion, additional typographic control to sites. But for the basics you're limited to 7-bit (not 8) ASCII. Everything else is earned, and you'd best degrade very gracefully. I've seen websites written where every individual paragraph has an explicitly-specified location. I've seen blogs written entirely in header-level tags. I've seen writers who add nonbreaking whitespace to the start of every paragraph. I've seen blink, marquee, and carousel abuse. I've seen foreground and background colours you wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.... ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=ITs-YX1yQ7o https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=ITs-YX1yQ7o
- zzo38computer 5y agoI also prefer plain text email. HTML email is no good, I think. However, you can use a multipart message with a plain part if wanted; Heirloom-mailx and other plain text email clients will then display the plain text part in that case. You could specify "Content-type: text/markdown" if you want Markdown (although I don't know which email clients will understand that), although I think that plain text is OK. I also dislike email newsletters or email discussion lists; either way, I would prefer NNTP.
- slaymaker1907 5y agoI disagree; while fancy stylings can be excessive, being able to use things like screenshots, headings, and tables is very useful. Sure you can do images and tables through attachments, but that adds extra steps which are inconvenient.
- tkzed49 5y agoRecently, I sent a longer-form announcement email and I think it really benefited from simple formatting. Headers that were visually distinct made it easier to parse, and in one place I set an image to float right which I felt made it less disruptive. I even set a max-width on the whole email, which I think works far better than the hard-wrapped text that some people write.
- cookiengineer 5y agoHonestly I'm using Thunderbird only because of two things: - Plain Text Mode and - uBlock Origin Extension is available (that can block also embedded JS) People underestimate the attack vector of emails. I'm glad those scammers haven't figured out (at least until now) how XSS could work in Gecko with XUL. Heap spraying could easily be a thing, given that MS Outlook also still uses their outdated rendering engine.
- mrweasel 5y agoFor most regular emails and newsletters I would agree. Those who truly care to know which HTML and css tags are available in email client are sending some for of ad. Say you’re a webshop and a customer has signed up for you “newsletter” then you kinda need HTML emails to show your advertised product directly in an email client.
- sevrinsky 5y agoI typically compose all messages in Markdown and then convert that into rendered HTML. So if you believe in the expressiveness of Markdown (which I hope you do), then HTML rendering is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, desktop Outlook is miserable with HTML support [1]. In particular, code blocks and quotes become an unreadable mess. The only way that I've found to include readable code blocks is to copy from VS Code, which somehow has the magic HTML combination that Outlook understands. [1] https://www.caniemail.com/clients/outlook/#windows https://www.caniemail.com/clients/outlook/#windows
- jonathanstrange 5y agoWhy is it necessary? The whole point of markdown is that you may render it but it's also fine and easy to read when it remains plaintext.
- sevrinsky 5y agoIf it's relevant enough for Github/Gitlab to render Markdown for the browser, clearly there's a visibility and aesthetic value to rendering.
- mro_name 5y agoHtml emails are as selfish and disrespectful like sneezing in other people's faces. For the sake of presenting marketing (Logos). Disgusting. Wear a mask, write text.
- Wilem82 5y agoI mean, how are you going to use rich text otherwise?
- mro_name 5y agoHomer didn't need rich text to write the Trojan War. Neither did Shakespeare, nor Ovid for their writing. My emails are way less ambitioned and are fine written in poor text.
- jonathanstrange 5y agoNobody needs rich text.
- Wilem82 5y agoBut, almost everyone does? Would you prefer all web articles to be strictly in plain text, same colour? No font changes between text and code, no colors for quotations, no indented multilevel bullet points? Basically, nothing that markdown can do. In your opinion, those things don’t improve ease of reading, right? What about syntax highlight in code - nobody needs that either, am I getting it right?
- jonathanstrange 5y agoNot in emails, you got that right.
- Wilem82 5y agoAnd how are emails any different from web articles? Both contain structured thoughts represented as structured text, both often contain code and quotations, lists and so on. Why special treatment?
- saurik 5y agoFWIW, I just don't support HTML email and only for a small handful of services and senders do I ever get burned. If my email client did a pass over the HTML and gave me all the text followed by all the links that would be sufficient (right now I sometimes simulate that by opening up the raw MIME and grabbing what I need). Like, do we live in a world where this even matters? How is your life being made worse by people using these features? E-mail was explicitly designed in a way to support emails that have both HTML and non-HTML, and for people like us--"worst case"--the HTML can be stripped to text and it is fine.
- MayeulC 5y agoWouldn't that end up being a variation of https://useplaintext.email/ https://useplaintext.email/ ?