Re: security problem in emailing HTML

On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Francis X. Speiser Jr. wrote:

>I think the security problem is not about mailing HTML, **it is the client with
>which you use to view it...**

Probably... :-)

>Also, I think HTML in an e-mail is better for formatting a document (or specifically
>style sheets) than all of these people who will write a simple message and then
>attach it as microsoft word document.

Certainly!

>I just tried it and sending the message "Hello World" via e-mail with a .doc
>attachment and it takes about 27KB, while the same message in HTML format used
>1KB...

Of course it is far better! (BTW, if anybody's got a good filter that
kills word attachments under UNIX, let me know :-) )

Even far better is if every person in an organization could put a document
on the web (if it isn't on the web, it doesn't exist, right?) fast and
easy, and send a message with an abstract (when software gets good,
produced automatically) and the URI. Probably, pure text would be
sufficient in the e-mail. It would save everybody a lot of time, and
servers a lot of load.

As for newsletters, I find it strange that big browsers hasn't yet
implemented a feature (in connection to e.g. bookmarks) where you can
define when or how often you want to check a web page. Then, the browser
checks the page first, to see if the page has been updated, then display a
list of pages that has been updated. Would be a lot more convienient than
subscribing to newsletters by e-mail, IMHO. I submitted this idea to
Netscape ages ago.

When I'm talking about bandwidth, I'm not refering to general surfing
(I've got a fast connection too), but all the applications I dream about
that can't yet be done on a large scale, e.g. remote telescope control of
a major observatory. 

Best,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Graduate astronomy-student                    Problems worthy of attack
University of Oslo, Norway            Prove their worth by hitting back
E-mail: kjetikj@astro.uio.no                                - Piet Hein
Homepage <URL:http://www.astro.uio.no/~kjetikj/>
Webmaster@skepsis.no

Received on Thursday, 9 December 1999 15:30:43 UTC