Re: security problem in emailing HTML

On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Dan Connolly wrote:

> Why is use of HTML for email a sign of cluelessness?

Because it's rude.  It requires me to equip and configure a specialized
viewer for content that could have been conveyed more efficiently as plain
text.  Even "plain text" has reasonable conventions (and variations) for
rich-text-like features when and where needed (slashes, asterisks,
underscores, etc.)  I have yet to see an example where it would benefit
*me* to see someone else's email message in HTML.

Most of the time - make that overwhelmingly - the socalled HTML messages
I received were from people using software thoughtlessly.  Just about all
of the rest - where the HTML was apparently a conscious decision - the
people were showing off how "advanced" and "with-it" they thought they
were.  
 
> I have to agree that most of the mail UAs that do HTML today do it
> *very* poorly, but I consider that a bug that should be fixed,
> not a permanent problem.

"Very poorly" is par for the course.  Far from being a problem, it should
be considered normal.  That's the reality of Tag Soup.


Arjun

Received on Wednesday, 8 December 1999 17:25:11 UTC