221–230 of 263 posts
HTML email was such a tragic mistake. I think the whole mess could have been averted if Markdown had been invented about twenty years earlier.
You're really rolling a dice on what may work, even if it's valid HTML
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Most popular only because it was included with the OS and most IT departments did not allow use of other browsers. Just because it was the most installed does not make it the most popular. There was an old saying, "Internet Explorer: the most used browser to download another browser."
IE 4 and 5 were pretty good. ActiveDesktop was pretty cool. XMLHttpRequest turned out to be revolutionary. It was only after triple whammy of Netscape being unable to further compete, the dotcom crash and the antitrust suit against Microsoft's integration between Windows and IE that IE got deprioritized by MS and slowly turned into the underfeatured mess every developer hated.
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By this standard, we should go back to Lynx, because rich web browsers are way more dangerous than this extreme edge case that this guy invented because he doesn’t like HTML email.
Guess why browser sandboxes, TLS and HTTPS exist? But the mail protocol is still the same.
Email is a standards backwater, but the solution is not to kneecap it.
> Apple Mail (iOS) : 266/284 > Gmail (Android) : 111/284 Interesting corrective to the “Apple is holding back HTML” narrative that appears so often on HN.
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I believe there are two points in the message : - A normative one : the less is supported, the better. - A descriptive one : many (not indicative of any share) of their relations actually do that. None of the points is telling about their relations, aside from, maybe, not having many friends in adtech.
"Many friends in adtech ..." try average people. HTML email would not be a thing if only adtech people used it, my man.
And, by the way, most of my friends do not use html/CSS directly, or even indirectly use it besides some bold, coloring or the random photo attachment. Zero of them know caniemail.com, and, if they understood the point of it, zero of them would want or need it.
Average people seeing html in their mail doesn't mean they have an opinion on it, or would want more of it if they were told honestly what it does and who abuses it.
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"Many friends in adtech ..." try average people. HTML email would not be a thing if only adtech people used it, my man.
Average people tend to use what they have, I have zero "average" friend trying to get more supported features than there currently are. And, by the way, most of my friends do not use html/CSS directly, or even indirectly use it besides some bold, coloring or the random photo attachment. Zero of them know caniemail.com, and, if they understood the point of it, zero of them would want or need it. Average people seeing…
There are two parts to how HTML email is used: Creation and consumption. The average person consumes HTML email.
The lower the score, the better. I know many who have a policy of "emails must be in plaintext only, with no attachments unless agreed to in advance; everything else gets deleted automatically."
The problem is going overboard on CSS (maybe none should be allowed) or allowing any javascript at all. I can't recall any email security issue ever which is HTML only without any CSS or javascript.
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MIME is needed, and with MIME, HTML is basically right there, so people are going to use it.
HTML is not needed for attachments to work. If the government for example, banned all use of HTML in emails, people could still attach (non-HTML) files to emails the same way they do now. Therefore the comment I replied to, a defense of HTML in emails, is a bogus argument.
Why not HTML? At least it isn't RTF or some wonky SGML evolutionary dead-end.
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Average people tend to use what they have, I have zero "average" friend trying to get more supported features than there currently are. And, by the way, most of my friends do not use html/CSS directly, or even indirectly use it besides some bold, coloring or the random photo attachment. Zero of them know caniemail.com, and, if they understood the point of it, zero of them would want or need it. Average people seeing…
This was not my point and you know it. There are two parts to how HTML email is used: Creation and consumption. The average person consumes HTML email.
No, but that was mine in the message you answered to.
> The average person consumes HTML email.
And I'm not sure the average person cares about receiving elaborate emails with spy pixels and advanced use of CSS either.
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> But at this point, it's pretty clear that most non-technical people prefer emails with fancy text and graphics. And what percentage of e-mails from people / human beings have those things? Certainly marketing e-mails have fancy formats, but I've rarely seen any person at a companies I've worked at use any kind of formatting: generally most folks hit reply and start typing with whatever the default is. Hardly any it…
You must be joking. I write and receive emails containing lists, hyperlinks, or blockquotes all the time. I don't need the last flexbox technology, but some formatting is important.
I am not.
I don't receive e-mails with fancy formatting at all. As for hyperlinks: I can paste a URL just fine without an tag.