E-mail: plain text is best – follow-up
Posted on 16 Apr 2011 by Alan Burns
After my recent article on formatted e-mail a reader commented:
This is outdated nonsense. Use HTML for all emails (and UTF-8, for that matter).
If you can’t see it correctly, upgrade your mail client. Stop living in the 90s, and stop trying to force others to. Even the author of “Why HTML in E-Mail is a Bad Idea” has changed his mind.
Regarding that article mentioned, more recent reader comments on the author’s blog show that many people still dislike HTML mail. In any event, no one is forced to do anything, it’s a choice and I want people to be aware of the issues.
The comment: “If you can’t see it correctly, upgrade your mail client” is interesting. It’s not about me, it’s about everyone’s recipients. In fact, I use a very recent mail client.
When someone composes a formatted message, whether HTML, RTF, or something else, that user knows how it looks only on their own system. They have no way to know how it will appear on a recipient’s system.
The recipient may have a lower screen resolution, so the message lines may extend past the screen edge. The recipient may have aging or impaired vision, and be unable to see the tiny fonts. The colour choice may be difficult to read. Or, as in one of my examples, formatting may force the recipient to click on each attachment link individually to separately view each photograph, when if it were sent in plain text all images would be automatically displayed.
If you know that all your recipients can view your formatted mail comfortably, then all is well and you have no reason to change. However, many users assume that the way they see something on their screens is the same for everyone. That is not the case, as formatted messages render differently on different systems, software and screens. If we want recipients to be able to comfortably read our messages, it’s important to be aware.
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