141–150 of 183 posts
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I use mutt and unfortunately in the corporate world you can't just ignore HTML or even HTML only mails. I pipe them to elinks, works 99.9% of the time easily.
That may be the case, but that still doesn't make HTML a part of email itself. It's using email to send/receive HTML.
It’s all text if you split enough hairs.
The answer is, because Outlook is rendering your emails using Word as a browser. Only a monopoly like Microsoft could get away with that.
What's the problem there? Unless Microsoft forces you to buy a separate Word license to use their email product, who cares if they reuse some of their own code?
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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!
Some businesses like to retain users, and not alienate them using obscure, hard-to use-user interfaces, and blaming the user when they get it wrong. 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 obtus…
Text. Just use damn text. Nobody wants to look at your logo. Why biz people have to ruin everything.
The answer is, because Outlook is rendering your emails using Word as a browser. Only a monopoly like Microsoft could get away with that.
> Only a monopoly like Microsoft could get away with that. What's the problem there? Unless Microsoft forces you to buy a separate Word license to use their email product, who cares if they reuse some of their own code?
If real competition existed senders would send modern HTML mail using CSS and Outlook would not be able to render half of it. But instead developers have to write email to the antique standards used by Word, with layout using tables and without css.
And Microsoft doesn’t care, they get away because Outlook is the monopoly.
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…
Why don't you send PDFs?
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Some businesses like to retain users, and not alienate them using obscure, hard-to use-user interfaces, and blaming the user when they get it wrong. 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 obtus…
If you can't reply to an email with 'YES' then you certainly aren't smart enough to have a good enough job to pay any reasonable amount of money.
"Yes alright renew my subscription, just make it start in two weeks this time"
Your "solution" fails immediately here, because it gives people a false idea that they are in a dialogue with you whereas they are actually just expected to reply in a binary way.
Finding "a line of text in a string that contains the word 'YES'" is indeed trivial, however if that's all you can think of you should not be employed in any position of responsibility as it demonstrates a profound lack of judgement, understanding of how real people behave, and general business acumen.
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That may be the case, but that still doesn't make HTML a part of email itself. It's using email to send/receive HTML.
The ability to use formats other than plain text have been a standard part of email since 1992: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1341 HTML email is not merely an HTML file sent by email – it is the email.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some businesses like to retain users, and not alienate them using obscure, hard-to use-user interfaces, and blaming the user when they get it wrong. 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 obtus…
If you can't reply to an email with 'YES' then you certainly aren't smart enough to have a good enough job to pay any reasonable amount of money.
The answer is, because Outlook is rendering your emails using Word as a browser. Only a monopoly like Microsoft could get away with that.
It's good to remember that Outlook isn't actually an email client. It was bought by Microsoft back in the days before TCP/IP became common. Outlook (still) calls messages "memos". The _first_ thing Outlook does with an RFC-compliant email is convert it into the Outlook "memo" format. There is no option to view the original email message at all. Microsoft simply bolted on a filter to deal with emails. I had hoped that the "Mail" client in Windows 10 would be a real mail user agent, but it's _worse_ than Outlook, without the excuse of predating email and being another program MS bought and rebranded.