Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 19:42:29 +0200 From: Paul Everlund <tdv94ped@cs.umu.se> To: Paul Bille <Paul@eBille.cudenver.edu> Cc: Freebsd-Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: HTML mail (hub.freebsd.org spam policy) Message-ID: <3CADE205.819F1580@cs.umu.se> References: <NABBKDMEKLDADELPGJPHGEHDENAA.Paul@eBille.cudenver.edu>
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Paul Bille wrote: > > > It's also quite easy to configure your mail client to not send HTML at > > all, but plain text. > > I don't know if this topic is appropriate for the FreeBSD list but . . . > > IMHO, Although HTML email isn't appropriate for this list or any where the > target audience is likely to be using a text only mail application, it is a > valuable tool to reach folks using HTML enabled mail apps like Outlook or > Netscape Messenger for the following reasons: > > 1. It provides some control over aesthetic features that make the message > more readable. Agree! It might look better in HTML provided the sender have basic skills in layout techniques :-), else it might make a message unreadable. Also, as different versions of HTML are used, one can end up in not being able to read the HTM-mail at all. Anyway I agree. Used in the right way they are not all bad. > 2. It allows the author to include references to additional information > without necessarily bundling all the referenced material into the message. > i.e. smaller e-mail HTML stub References. Yep. But how does it work if one want to make a reply to an HTML- mail? Haven't ever tried it, so I don't know if one can do it in a neat way. Also some text based mailreaders can handle URLs, so one can view the refe- renced pages anyway. But this is probably not valid for all mailreading apps. > 3. It allows the recipient to download on demand spreading the impact on the > network over time. This does alleviate network contention particularly with > mass mailings and large attachments. Huh? That I didn't got, what you'd mean. Some mailreading programs just down- load the received mail headers. First when you want to read it, it is down- loaded to your harddrive. But I'm not sure it was this you meant. :-) > Although we do include URLs in email messages as an alternative to sending > HTML format messages, HREFs are much more appealing to people than URLs. > I'm presuming of course that I'm sending this message to a person and not > just to a computer ;-) Some people like to talk of the brain as a computer. If so, then the message is send to a computer, and then read by an even bigger and better computer. :-) > Don't give up on HTML format e-mail completely. "Send e-mail in HTML > format" is a recipient attribute in both Outlook and Netscape Messenger. > Set it accordingly. HTML-mails are not bad, although some viruses uses HTML-exploits, as a virus which started automatically due to a bug in IE. Luckily the Netscape version I'm using didn't support this IE HTML-extension, so it didn't execute. And there are probably security holes in some text only mail readers too, but not that common I guess. There are pros and cons to everything in the world. :-) > Thanks, > Paul > http://bille.cudenver.edu/author Best regards, Paul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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