Dear Jolly Roger,
Jolly Roger said:
It all boils down to [in]sensitiveness of others needs.
Those who, like you, aren't sensitive to others needs feel that they
should be able to impose their preferred font face, size, style on
others, and others should be happy with what they get. So you send
messages in HTML, which probably doesn't display the way the reader
wants, and may not even display the way *you* intend due to differences
in rendering environments. In some environments, HTML won't display at
all. That doesn't concern people like you, though. In your mind, that's
the reader's problem. And it's clear you don't think much of the needs
of your readers.
Would be nice to be able to mark my answers in blue, but I guess that's not
happening because your grandpa has a sight problem (argument is not valid,
because then the WHOLE WORLD should be in plain text, including the internet,
newspaper, etc). Why not choose magnification tools? Than he doesn't have to
miss out on the nicely composed message with pictures of his grandchildren
you are denying him.
It must be a burden for you to browse the net with all that HTML around. I
guess you use a text browser? If there are differences in the display than
this should be technically discussed and fixed. HTML is designed to display
about the same way on different devices, and does this perfectly for 99%
On the other hand, those who, like me, *are* sensitive to others needs,
realize others may prefer to view email in their own font face, size,
and style that is comfortable for their own eyes. So we send messages in
plain text, which lets them view our messages the way they want.
That's just no valid argument to ban HTML from e-mail, because you compare
the two like their possibilities are equal. Plain text will allways render to
one single style, size, etc. This can be a good choice for some messages, but
not for all.
Example: My grandfather prefers to format all of his email in 14 point
Helvetica, because he has trouble reading smaller text. If I were to
send him HTML messages at 10 point, he'd have trouble reading them.
Instead, I send plain text emails, and his email client uses *his*
preferences to display my emails in *his* preferred font face, size, and
style.
Won't help much because a lot of emails come in HTML these days
Like the
www as well. Better to get a tool which magnifies apps, browsers, email, etc
in one go
The problem (that text doesn't render at a specific size on every system
or email client)
This is not a problem, because we speak of minor differences. The problem in
this case is a wrong use of the font size tag.
can't really be solved - for all the same reasons it
can't really be solved for HTML web pages on the web. Different HTML
rendering engines display HTML in their own unique ways, and settings
and environments on other computers have an effect on display as well.
It's not something you can strictly control. The best you get with HTML
is a suggestion of what th end result should look like.
This is really not a problem which needs to be solved, because differences
are minor, or due to bad design. There's a lot of work to do on the HTML
specs, specially with mobile devices but "a suggestion of the end result"?
Nah...
Lay-out, presentation and personalisation are part of communication
anyway.
What you conveniently ignore is that with plain text email, the reader
gets to have the email presented the way *they* want rather than the way
*you* want.
Think again. I am your reader; I WANT to read answers in different colors.
You cannot compare the two.
How would you like it if Richard Simmons designed your wardrobe? Not
much, I'm betting. : ) similarly, I don't want Richard Simmons
defining the email font, size, and style I use to view my email. I want
to view my email in *my own* preferred font size and so on! It's really
not all that hard to understand.
You are refering to e-mail as if it's only used by you to send your
girlfriend a message diner must be served in half an hour because daddyo is
coming home. This the 2008 buddy. People WANT TO HAVE nicely layed-out
e-mails. Otherwise, it wouldn't be there.
And as I've said before, there are other reasons plain text is better
than HTML for email:
HTML messages are generally two to four times larger for the same
message than plain text equivalents. That means not only do they take
longer to transfer over the net, contributing to network congestion,
they also take up more disk space on your computer, on the recipient's
computer, and on every server they hit along the way!
I guess you're writing this while dl-ing a 9GB HDDVD pr0n movie at 400Kbit
right? C'mon... don't gimme that crap from the 80ies when you had one floppy
to put a whole OS on.
With HTML messages, the people who receive the messages have little or
no control over the text font, size, and style. They must read the
message in whatever font, size, and style *you* set when you created the
message. Plain Text messages, on the other hand, display in whatever
font, size, and style the recipient wishes.
Again you deny the possibilities of HTML and comparing them with
plain-text... been there.
HTML email is dangerous because it may contain links to external sites
that will do malicious things. For instance, a spammer can include a
link to an image, but this link contains a tag as data. The server at
the other end will get that request when your *read your email* and
based on the tag, will be able to confirm that you've read the email and
not only flag your email address as active/good, but also use your IP
with geographical location servers to assign a location code so that
they can then sell your email address to other spammers along with your
general location. If everyone stopped sending HTML emails, everyone
would block it, and then spammers would be left with very few means to
escape spam filters because their messages would have to be simple and
without tricks.
Or you could send a letter on plain paper! I've got a mailclient which deals
with that perfectly. It's called Microsoft Outlook; you should try it!
Not
using a certain technology because other people try to use it against me is
not my style. Just get smarter.
J
