Re: XHTML Integration Sets

--On Tuesday, 20 February, 2007 23:04 +0100 Daniel Glazman
<daniel.glazman@disruptive-innovations.com> wrote:

> 
> On 20/02/2007 17:40, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
> 
>> The announce message from Daniel Glazman indicates that this
>> group may  want to define a "safe profile" of XHTML for use
>> in email. 
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> Yes. Let me summarize in just a few list items :
> 
> 1. HTML in email is here to stay
> 2. HTML in email is appreciated a lot by non-techies
> 3. HTML in email is much more used than text email by direct
> marketing
>     but it's hard, very hard to edit/composer
> 4. HTML in email is unreliable because of interoperability
> issues
>     between mail user agents, and very complex to edit for the
> same
>     reasons ; powerful HTML 4 features are unreliable for same
> reasons
> 5. HTML in email is seen by some as a security threat
> 6. HTML in email and HTML in Instant Messenging live together
> 7. a few direct marketing companies told me they're not happy
> because
>     we, standard weenies, do nothing to improve the situation

Dan, let me add a few entries to your list...

8. There is a very strong correlation between the preference of
the "direct marketing companies" for HTML mail and the
observation that such mail is blocked or given high
probable-spam scores in some environments.

9. In those environments in which "direct marketing company", or
a major subset of such companies, is equated with "spammer", (i)
helping them out is not considered as having positive value and
(ii) no amount of improvement to, or profiling or renaming of,
HTML is going to help their traffic get through unless
compliance with the profile can be validated or certified
without opening the message.

10. I don't have hard data but, at least anecdotally, the
fraction of the HTML that the direct marketing companies have
been sending out that consists only of a small collection of
image links to external sources, with no text or other
email-embedded materials has risen rapidly in recent months.  It
is not clear to me how an HTML profile is going to help very
much if that is what they want to do.

   john

Received on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 13:15:59 UTC