[TriLUG] HTML email

John Franklin franklin at elfie.org
Thu Jan 8 17:15:47 EST 2004


On Jan 8, 2004, at 11:37 AM, Jon Carnes wrote:

> On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 11:04, Dan Monjar wrote:
>> --On Thursday, January 08, 2004 10:29:45 AM -0500 Magnus Hedemark
>> <chrish at trilug.org> wrote:
>>
>>>> BTW: Embrace the new era and accept that HTML email is here to 
>>>> stay...
>>
>> HTML mail is an abomination and it sucks, too.
>
> The html email that I get is either spam or from **paying** clients.  
> So
> even though html is the "spammers choice", I love html email.  Consider
> me a victim of Pavlov's law.

HTML mail also opens up huge security holes as the mail you're reading 
may contain executable content, or Java plug-ins or embedded plug-in 
content.  The last thing I need my e-mail to do is sing 
"badgerbadgerbadgerbadger" or distract me with entertainment while it 
quietly goes sniffing through something else on my drive, even if it's 
just the library of cookies.

Rich text mail, OTOH, provides all the features people want in their 
mail (fonts, italics, large print, embedded images) without coming even 
close to allowing for executable content.

Rich text mail is readable by most (if not all) modern mail clients, 
including text based ones like mutt.

You can tell if your client supports it because this message is a rich 
text message, and has bold, italic, and underlined text in it.  It can 
do colors, too.

jf
-- 
John Franklin
franklin at elfie.org
ICBM: 35°43'56"N 78°53'27"W

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