4 ms·

By the wording in your post, it seems you're already convinced, so I'm wondering why you're asking at all. Anyhow, the more important question is actually, "Wh

by jcr 14y ago

By the wording in your post, it seems you're already convinced, so I'm wondering why you're asking at all. Anyhow, the more important question is actually, "What is your target audience?" Hypothetically, I'll use myself as an example of not being your target audience. (1) I don't use web mail. (2) My MUA of choice doesn't support HTML, so it's not exposed to the risks of HTML mail, and obviously, I like it that way. (3) If you wanted to communicate with me, you'd ether send plain text, or also send plain text. (4) I probably have cooked up something to strip HTML to plain text for white listed know/wanted senders, but all other HTML-only messages are most likely spam, so it's deleted by default, at the server. (5) If the plain text portion of your multi-format mail is "visit this link", I'll black list you as a spammer. (6) If I'm a paying customer and you send HTML-only email, I'll complain, or silently decide to never do business with you again. (7) If you send HTML-only emails that are difficult to LISTEN to via a screen readers used by the visually impaired, I'll actually resent you... or worse. (8) Similar is true for other kinds of impairments (physical, hearing, ...). The people who will be upset by HTML-only email will fall into two camps; the disabled, and the security conscious, albeit the latter has some cross-over with the tin-foil-hat crowd. It's not a huge population, and they may not matter to you, but excluding disabled people can be a really bad idea. It takes zero imagination to imagine the possible bad press from excluding disabled people. Worse yet, being on the wrong side of accessibility laws can be extremely costly. And worst of all, your HTML-only stuff could be accessible, but you could still be accused/sued for it being inaccessible whether or not the accusations have any merit. (read: increased risk). Retaining at a plain text part in a multi-part message along with your preferred HTML is just smart. Plain text may not be as fancy, or for that matter, effective, and it does have some other known drawbacks (encoding). On the other hand, it's easy to do and it prevents you from alienating people and upsetting potential customers

eevilspock 14y ago
Thanks for all the detail. But your automatic rejections seem kind of stiff. What happens when a friend not yet on your whitelist sends you html email? And you treat all emails with a link as spam? The fact that you have a whitelist says something, doesn't it?
- jcr 14y ago
  I said it was hypothetical, but I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough. It was easier to write the potential objections clearly from the first person. Though I personally prefer plain text email and do use an MUA, I'm actually not a kook about it. ;-) (MUA is "Mail User Agent" often called an "email client" -- I should have expanded that abbreviation previously.) I have non-technical family members who send me HTML-only emails. It's annoying, but they're family. Also, I'm fluent in HTML source, so it's never been an issue. I've seen the mentioned methods used by others, particularly by people who prefer the terminal based "mutt" email client. The old-school UNIX folks and the security conscious folks are a TINY minority of users, and their choices are, umm, well, self-inflicted wounds. Not supporting their preferences could be a reasonable business decision but... The most important issue is the increased risk you face by not supporting accessibility for the disabled. If you intend to ever have interaction with government organizations, you MUST --by law-- have support for people with disabilities. Of course, the exact laws vary by government, but they're common in most civilized countries. Being on the wrong side of those laws can be very expensive. Sadly, in the US there's an entire industry made of suing people/companies for failing to provide adequate access to disabled people. --It's just not worth the risk.
  - eevilspock 14y ago
    > I'm actually not a kook about it. ;-) I'm glad you were being hypothetical, because you were sounding kooky, but I didn't want to say :) I gotta believe that HTML email doesn't pose an accessibility issue as long as the HTML is simply used for formatting. Any client can easily extract the text. Am I missing something?
    - jcr 14y ago
      damn. I really need to be a lot more careful when hypothetically impersonating kooks --it seems I'm better at it than I thought. ;) Unfortunately, the parts you're still missing are commonly missed. Unless you are disabled or have done work assisting disabled people, it's really tough to grasp all the details involved in "accessibility" coding. The most common oversight is not knowing the significant variance in impairments. For example, vision impairments are not binary. It's not a matter of blind, or not blind. There's actually a fairly vast spectrum of disorders under the "vision impairment" category. Again, hypothetically, all you want to do is add some formatting to your email messages to make them look attractive. If a disabled person is unable to see the foreground text color you used against your chosen background color, then they will be unable to read your message. If it is a commercial message, and they can't read your 'unsubscribe' link, you might be in violation of the CAN-SPAM act. --As mentioned before, it doesn't matter if the accusation is true for it to be an expensive pain. Sure, the example is a bit of an over-simplification since people with various color deficiencies can often still read poorly chose colors due to variance in luminance between the background and foreground. None the less, that you should get the underlying point of the example; you can't anticipate the exact impairment so you are unable to anticipate the impact of your formatting decisions. If it's easy to extract text, then you should do it once, send it along with the HTML version as a separate MIME part. Many clients do this automatically, but I have a hunch you're sending commercial mail through a bulk mail service (MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc.). A lot of the services will automatically generate and include plain text version along with the HTML version, so it's not a real problem for you. Speaking of hunches, I mean no offense, but for some reason I think you might be somewhat unfamiliar with the format of raw email messages, particularly the MIME specifications? It is entirely possible to have a single email contain both a HTML version of the message and a plain text version of the message in the same email. Plain text mail clients are typically configured to just ignore the HTML version, but the vast majority of email clients (including web mail clients) will render the HTML version. May I ask why you have an aversion to also including a plain text version of your messages?

by jcr 14y ago

eevilspock 14y ago

Thanks for all the detail. But your automatic rejections seem kind of stiff. What happens when a friend not yet on your whitelist sends you html email? And you treat all emails with a link as spam? The fact that you have a whitelist says something, doesn't it?

jcr 14y ago
I said it was hypothetical, but I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough. It was easier to write the potential objections clearly from the first person. Though I personally prefer plain text email and do use an MUA, I'm actually not a kook about it. ;-) (MUA is "Mail User Agent" often called an "email client" -- I should have expanded that abbreviation previously.) I have non-technical family members who send me HTML-only emails. It's annoying, but they're family. Also, I'm fluent in HTML source, so it's never been an issue. I've seen the mentioned methods used by others, particularly by people who prefer the terminal based "mutt" email client. The old-school UNIX folks and the security conscious folks are a TINY minority of users, and their choices are, umm, well, self-inflicted wounds. Not supporting their preferences could be a reasonable business decision but... The most important issue is the increased risk you face by not supporting accessibility for the disabled. If you intend to ever have interaction with government organizations, you MUST --by law-- have support for people with disabilities. Of course, the exact laws vary by government, but they're common in most civilized countries. Being on the wrong side of those laws can be very expensive. Sadly, in the US there's an entire industry made of suing people/companies for failing to provide adequate access to disabled people. --It's just not worth the risk.
- eevilspock 14y ago
  > I'm actually not a kook about it. ;-) I'm glad you were being hypothetical, because you were sounding kooky, but I didn't want to say :) I gotta believe that HTML email doesn't pose an accessibility issue as long as the HTML is simply used for formatting. Any client can easily extract the text. Am I missing something?
  - jcr 14y ago
    damn. I really need to be a lot more careful when hypothetically impersonating kooks --it seems I'm better at it than I thought. ;) Unfortunately, the parts you're still missing are commonly missed. Unless you are disabled or have done work assisting disabled people, it's really tough to grasp all the details involved in "accessibility" coding. The most common oversight is not knowing the significant variance in impairments. For example, vision impairments are not binary. It's not a matter of blind, or not blind. There's actually a fairly vast spectrum of disorders under the "vision impairment" category. Again, hypothetically, all you want to do is add some formatting to your email messages to make them look attractive. If a disabled person is unable to see the foreground text color you used against your chosen background color, then they will be unable to read your message. If it is a commercial message, and they can't read your 'unsubscribe' link, you might be in violation of the CAN-SPAM act. --As mentioned before, it doesn't matter if the accusation is true for it to be an expensive pain. Sure, the example is a bit of an over-simplification since people with various color deficiencies can often still read poorly chose colors due to variance in luminance between the background and foreground. None the less, that you should get the underlying point of the example; you can't anticipate the exact impairment so you are unable to anticipate the impact of your formatting decisions. If it's easy to extract text, then you should do it once, send it along with the HTML version as a separate MIME part. Many clients do this automatically, but I have a hunch you're sending commercial mail through a bulk mail service (MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc.). A lot of the services will automatically generate and include plain text version along with the HTML version, so it's not a real problem for you. Speaking of hunches, I mean no offense, but for some reason I think you might be somewhat unfamiliar with the format of raw email messages, particularly the MIME specifications? It is entirely possible to have a single email contain both a HTML version of the message and a plain text version of the message in the same email. Plain text mail clients are typically configured to just ignore the HTML version, but the vast majority of email clients (including web mail clients) will render the HTML version. May I ask why you have an aversion to also including a plain text version of your messages?