Richard Freeman on 10 Oct 2009 05:07:56 -0700


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Re: [PLUG] web access email adds html code in message


Ronald.KayeJr@cognizant.com wrote:
> I typically have no issues, except …
> 
> I have heard from some people that they receive my messages with HTML  tags,
> 
> Making the post unreadable.
> 
>  

Well, the unreadable bit depends.  With a very old mail reader (or a new 
one that just doesn't support html) the mail will pretty-much be 
unreadable since the tags will be uninterpreted.

However, 99.999999999% of all people who receive email will have an 
email client that will render the tags.  So, most people won't complain.

> 
> It only seems to be happening to people on the lists above.
> 
 > Any ideas on why this is happening?

Well, your emails are being sent that way to everybody, but if they are 
running any but a handful of email clients they won't realize it.

Lots of people like being able to type formatted emails 
(bold/italics/etc), and as a result almost all modern email readers 
support html mail.  Many popular ones send it by default (such as Outlook).

However, many people who have been using email for a longer period of 
time (before the Internet became popular in many cases), prefer ASCII 
email.  Then the email is rendered in accordance with the reader's 
preferences instead of the sender's.  In most cases, the formatting is 
superfluous and detracts from the content of the message.  However, 
there are cases where HTML can be used to enhance the content of a 
message (for which purpose it is only rarely used).

The same sorts of people often don't use flash either, and despise AJAX. 
  :)  I'm not sure I'd be so annoyed with either if it weren't for the 
fact that it doesn't work 99% of the time for me (browsing from 
konqueror on amd64 or an android phone).

Those sorts of people tend to be concentrated on mailing lists like this 
one.

> What OS?

Almost certainly something with less than 2% market share - like linux, 
symbian, etc.  However, you'll find some windows/OSX as well.

> 
> What email client.

Almost certainly something you've never heard of - almost without 
exception.  :)  Or they're using something you have heard of and they 
notice that the rendering of your messages is different than what they 
get with plain text.

> I am sending this msg with an employer email account, and regular 
> outlook, so no issue with this one I presume

Actually, that email was in html as well.  :)  Or at least multipart.

On mailing lists where unix-like OSes are common html mail is generally 
frowned upon.  Your family and friends won't care at all...  :)
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