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I was looking into using email for rich content delivery yesterday as part of this "Watch me program" thing I'm doing. How difficult could it be to send rich ht

I was looking into using email for rich content delivery yesterday as part of this "Watch me program" thing I'm doing. How difficult could it be to send rich html to somebody on email? Turns out, freaking difficult. For one of the simplest protocols in the world, email is now a byzantine disaster. Different clients render things differently, different providers block or don't block things -- and that's not even getting into trusted domains and spam issues, which you end up depending on third parties to assist. Add into this mix Google's notorious black-box/impenetrability/lost-in-space-customer-support? I don't see an optimistic future for you. I'd rather go back to hand-coding COM in C++ that become a network email engineer. That's got to be a brutal job. You're dependent on so many moving pieces and you control so very little.

frozenport 12y ago
Do you think the strict restrictions reduce spam, and phishing attacks, and email client hacks? For example, many clients dont let you change the default colorbof a hyperlink.
- DanielBMarkham 12y ago
  I think you'd be better off with an open standard, rich, dynamic html that runs wherever the user is. Then put all the sophistication in whitelisting senders. We also need to bolt-in secured messaging so that nobody except the people corresponding have any idea what's in the message. The way it's set up now, with hundreds of vendors implementing different control protocols and tens of thousands of spammers trying to break in? I don't see anybody being happy -- some spammers get in anyway, and email users have different experiences for the same dang net service. Admins want to pull their hair out. It really is a miracle things work as well as they do. If we can't get email working right? It doesn't portend for a bright future for the rest of internet traffic.

frozenport 12y ago

Do you think the strict restrictions reduce spam, and phishing attacks, and email client hacks? For example, many clients dont let you change the default colorbof a hyperlink.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago
I think you'd be better off with an open standard, rich, dynamic html that runs wherever the user is. Then put all the sophistication in whitelisting senders. We also need to bolt-in secured messaging so that nobody except the people corresponding have any idea what's in the message. The way it's set up now, with hundreds of vendors implementing different control protocols and tens of thousands of spammers trying to break in? I don't see anybody being happy -- some spammers get in anyway, and email users have different experiences for the same dang net service. Admins want to pull their hair out. It really is a miracle things work as well as they do. If we can't get email working right? It doesn't portend for a bright future for the rest of internet traffic.