131–140 of 183 posts
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> There is no "need" to show logos and images, etc. …yes, there is. Email is a communication medium, and like in all written communication, an image can be useful. Do I really need to explain that images are useful in human communication? > and most other people According to you I guess?
I am not an infant. I do not read picture books.
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Now you need to deal with « yes », « Yes », « YES. », HTML wrapping, user signatures, dangling spaces, etc. I’ve worked with a system that let users order domain names by email and it was a nightmare to maintain. Don’t EVER build a system that relies on reading and parsing emails sent by users, it WILL fail horribly.
> Now you need to deal with « yes », « Yes », « YES. », HTML wrapping, user signatures, dangling spaces, etc. Oh no, you need to find a line of text in a string that contains the word 'YES'. How incredibly difficult. Are you even a programmer? This is entirely trivial.
Maybe they’ll write « yeah » or « YE » or « oui », because that’s what users do
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> Now you need to deal with « yes », « Yes », « YES. », HTML wrapping, user signatures, dangling spaces, etc. Oh no, you need to find a line of text in a string that contains the word 'YES'. How incredibly difficult. Are you even a programmer? This is entirely trivial.
My point is you have to trust a user to input some raw text somewhat reliably. Have you dealt with users at scale? Whenever you provide a raw field in a form, the values are pathetic, tons of users can’t input things correct Maybe they’ll write « yeah » or « YE » or « oui », because that’s what users do
Those users absolutely can write 'YES'. They're perfectly capable of doing so. They don't do so because they're lazy. We all know people that simply refuse to read any kind of instruction on a computer screen. They will skip past any and all prompts. Guess what? That's their problem, not yours.
Stop enabling laziness!
If you think sending email is hard, you haven't tried sending whatsapp messages.
As someone who has done E-Mail Development and worked with Whatsapp, I'm still very much of the opinion that the former is much worse.
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Approximately no one outside of HN only wants text emails. And the argument that anything beyond plain text is a waste and ruins everything applies to literally every single medium out there where the written word is conveyed: webpages, magazines, printed flyers, books, etc. It's laughable to think that all formatting of any kind beyond ASCII is a waste. If it were up to HN readers, the entire world would be so ugly…
Why doesn't HN or reddit or most social media format messages in html like email? Email has been doing it for years. People would love it! Images, colors, tables, etc in every message! And why not in text messages? Its 2023 guys.
We send out HTML emails and reports to our users that make use of progress bars, lists, photos, colours etc and they love them. They can get quick full updates on their business without having to leave their mailbox. Pretty hard to do that in plain text.
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Approximately no one outside of HN only wants text emails. And the argument that anything beyond plain text is a waste and ruins everything applies to literally every single medium out there where the written word is conveyed: webpages, magazines, printed flyers, books, etc. It's laughable to think that all formatting of any kind beyond ASCII is a waste. If it were up to HN readers, the entire world would be so ugly…
It's more funny than that. Everyone wants text documents as well as rich documents as well as applications but no one wants a single file type to do all 3.
So we keep choosing formats that support the subset of features that our current problem needs. Email multipart messages containing a "safe" subset of HTML has solved some problems adequately, and when it doesn't always work, we include a link to a web page, so you can show it in a real browser, or we attach or embed a PDF.
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My point is you have to trust a user to input some raw text somewhat reliably. Have you dealt with users at scale? Whenever you provide a raw field in a form, the values are pathetic, tons of users can’t input things correct Maybe they’ll write « yeah » or « YE » or « oui », because that’s what users do
If the user can't follow basic instructions then they'll have to try again. Those users absolutely can write 'YES'. They're perfectly capable of doing so. They don't do so because they're lazy. We all know people that simply refuse to read any kind of instruction on a computer screen. They will skip past any and all prompts. Guess what? That's their problem, not yours. Stop enabling laziness!
If you can't create a way to say "yes", which is at least as easy to use as checking a checkbox and clicking a button, why should I assume you're capable of, well, much of anything.
It's not that it looks unprofessional. It looks either incompetent, or deliberately obtuse. In either case, I'll take my business elsewhere.
> An email is essentially just an HTML document, like a web page, except it's visualized in an email client, rather than a web browser. However, both are capable of rendering, which is the process of turning HTML code into text, rectangles, and images, i.e. the visualization of the content. No, it is not. An email is a text document. That document might be HTML, but it doesn't have to be. And if such email is sent to…
You will hate me then. I have recently started to embrace html emails. I needed to book a room for a series of events and color highlightinged the available options. Another time I needed to provide a summary of options for fees and that got added as a table with colours to indicate fees, profits and losses. And I don’t care at all if it meant that it could not be read in mutt. At some point we have to march forward…
It's HN, so I'm not surprised by the old "just send text" argument that always gets wheeled out when this topic come up, but for those not in a terminal all day there are valid reasons to format HTML emails (that don't include marketing). We send out HTML emails and reports to our users that make use of progress bars, lists, photos, colours etc and they love them. They can get quick full updates on their business wit…