4 ms·

Sending webpages as email is broken — let's not do it.

dtf 17y ago
Let's face it, email is on the way out anyway. Its future demographic consists entirely of nostalgic hackers, antiquated corporate IT regimes and orphaned spambots.
jrnkntl 17y ago
Try to convince the companies that rely for a large part on e-marketing. Trust me, that are a lot of companies.
- Tichy 17y ago
  Are there studies that show HTML-mails work better for marketing? Not saying there aren't but would be interesting to know. They certainly don't work better for me, because usually they literally display nothing (since I have disabled loading of remote images).
  - Jem 17y ago
    They don't work for me either, but we're in a minority. The non-techies seem to love HTML email. My boss, even, receives all sorts of crappy offers and adverts and forwards them on to me to "check out the bargain!" We have clients that pay thousands of pounds a month for HTML newsletter services (not to us, at the moment). I like to assume they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't work. (Don't 'they' say that only one person has to click a spam mail for it to be worth sending - is this not more or less the same thing?)
  - mtw 17y ago
    I'm a techie but I love threadless's HTML emails and newsletters (as well as Apple's, zip.ca etc.)
    - Tichy 17y ago
      What are threadless HTML emails?
      - callahad 17y ago
        Not a technical term; Threadless is a t-shirt company.
watchmvp 17y ago
http://www.watches-space.com/Jaeger-LeCoultre-Watches.html http://www.watches-space.com/Jaeger-LeCoultre-Watches.html Jaeger LeCoultre Watches
jodrellblank 17y ago
Having ways to embedd tables, images, fonts in emails is useful. Let's do it.
pbhjpbhj 17y ago
This is basically the attitude of the kmail developers - html email is bad. Who could possibly ever want to send a link or photo to someone in an email. Everyone should be forced to have green console text on a black background. Why can't they just use the IE8 rendering engine?
- extension 17y ago
  Images can be attached to an email without HTML and URLs that appear in text/plain emails are "linkified" by most readers. The original MIME specification included an "enriched text" subtype which was essentially an HTML subset that was easy to implement safely and served most purposes for person-to-person communication. MIME allows absolutely anything to be embedded in an email, but the standard explicitly discourages the use of HTML as the message body. The argument for standard compliant HTML support in all email clients is fairly weak considering it shouldn't be there at all.
  - ibsulon 17y ago
    How do I send email in 24 different colors with pictures of my puppy, then? A more serious restatement of the joke: Other than HTML email, there is no functional way for the average computer user to send personal information with the following properties: 1. Rich text with embedded images (you know... HTML) 2. available at work without running into firewall or security restrictions (Websense) 3. Easy enough to compete with email. 4. Cheap enough to the end user to compete with email. 5. Secure enough to allay concerns about personal information making it out into the wild. (Never mind that email is easily interceptable: there is a perception versus reality problem here.) A web application isn't going to do it. It's just too painful to attach more than two photos. A separate application isn't going to do it -- what corporate IT department is going to install it? Livejournal comes close for tech-savvy people, but it's not in the average user's current skill level. It's a fundamenally hard problem for social rather than technical reasons, and that is why people use HTML in email, and that is why vendors support it. Reducing it to a technical problem doesn't help.
    - extension 17y ago
alyx 17y ago
Here is the official response from Office. http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/06/24/the-power-of-word-in-outlook.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/06/24/the-power-o...

dtf 17y ago

Let's face it, email is on the way out anyway. Its future demographic consists entirely of nostalgic hackers, antiquated corporate IT regimes and orphaned spambots.

jrnkntl 17y ago

Try to convince the companies that rely for a large part on e-marketing. Trust me, that are a lot of companies.

Tichy 17y ago
Are there studies that show HTML-mails work better for marketing? Not saying there aren't but would be interesting to know. They certainly don't work better for me, because usually they literally display nothing (since I have disabled loading of remote images).
- Jem 17y ago
  They don't work for me either, but we're in a minority. The non-techies seem to love HTML email. My boss, even, receives all sorts of crappy offers and adverts and forwards them on to me to "check out the bargain!" We have clients that pay thousands of pounds a month for HTML newsletter services (not to us, at the moment). I like to assume they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't work. (Don't 'they' say that only one person has to click a spam mail for it to be worth sending - is this not more or less the same thing?)
- mtw 17y ago
  I'm a techie but I love threadless's HTML emails and newsletters (as well as Apple's, zip.ca etc.)
  - Tichy 17y ago
    What are threadless HTML emails?
    - callahad 17y ago
      Not a technical term; Threadless is a t-shirt company.

watchmvp 17y ago

http://www.watches-space.com/Jaeger-LeCoultre-Watches.html http://www.watches-space.com/Jaeger-LeCoultre-Watches.html Jaeger LeCoultre Watches

jodrellblank 17y ago

Having ways to embedd tables, images, fonts in emails is useful. Let's do it.

pbhjpbhj 17y ago

This is basically the attitude of the kmail developers - html email is bad. Who could possibly ever want to send a link or photo to someone in an email. Everyone should be forced to have green console text on a black background. Why can't they just use the IE8 rendering engine?

extension 17y ago
Images can be attached to an email without HTML and URLs that appear in text/plain emails are "linkified" by most readers. The original MIME specification included an "enriched text" subtype which was essentially an HTML subset that was easy to implement safely and served most purposes for person-to-person communication. MIME allows absolutely anything to be embedded in an email, but the standard explicitly discourages the use of HTML as the message body. The argument for standard compliant HTML support in all email clients is fairly weak considering it shouldn't be there at all.
- ibsulon 17y ago
  How do I send email in 24 different colors with pictures of my puppy, then? A more serious restatement of the joke: Other than HTML email, there is no functional way for the average computer user to send personal information with the following properties: 1. Rich text with embedded images (you know... HTML) 2. available at work without running into firewall or security restrictions (Websense) 3. Easy enough to compete with email. 4. Cheap enough to the end user to compete with email. 5. Secure enough to allay concerns about personal information making it out into the wild. (Never mind that email is easily interceptable: there is a perception versus reality problem here.) A web application isn't going to do it. It's just too painful to attach more than two photos. A separate application isn't going to do it -- what corporate IT department is going to install it? Livejournal comes close for tech-savvy people, but it's not in the average user's current skill level. It's a fundamenally hard problem for social rather than technical reasons, and that is why people use HTML in email, and that is why vendors support it. Reducing it to a technical problem doesn't help.
  - extension 17y ago

alyx 17y ago

Here is the official response from Office. http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/06/24/the-power-of-word-in-outlook.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/06/24/the-power-o...