Slashdot Mirror
Is HTML E-mail Still Evil?
Charlie Campbell asks: "My boss is pretty adamant about getting HTML newsletters to our clients; and, I'm pretty adamant about finding an alternative. I can understand the benefits in HTML mail from a designer's (mine) and marketing standpoint (that of my boss); yet, based on foreseeable issues with recipient software, mail filters, dial-up connections, etc. I feel that the risks outweigh the benefits. We've all heard this a million times... but is it now an outdated concern? Should I trust our client-base to be fully equipped for such a mailer? Should I worry about improper delivery marring our professional image? Is there anyone documenting the issue from a current-day perspective?"
I don't know about your organization, but in mine we use Novell Groupwise. To my knowledge (i'm a graphic artist, not a IT guy) groupwise doesn't support html email. I have to go to the netmail version (web based) to view the HTML email.
Just a thought, that if you run groupwise, you probably shouldn't send out PURE html. Send out a mixed one.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
I doubt that it will cause a professionalism problem. Anyone who cannot read HTML emails know that they exist and that they can't read them and will therefore, not think of your company as being non-professional. It is a good idea to allow the recipient to choose whether he wants HTML formatted news or plain-text, but the current position is not as bad as it may seem.
I don't mind HTML email, personally, but when I have a choice, I opt for the plain-text version. I think that's the key--allow people to receive your newsletters, receipts, or whatever in the format they want, and things should be fine.
I'd also default to HTML mailings, simply because the people who bitch loudest about HTML (non-pejorative) are also probably capable of finding the preference for plaintext themselves.
Yes.
Hundreds of thousands of email content publishers ask their users whether they want plain-text or HTML versions. Even if most users don't understand the question, they're used to being asked. Why don't you try that and then just publish one version of your newsletter to each of the resulting lists?
99% of business email is HTML. Nobody cares about the "evil" of HTML mail except a few crusty old geeks. Last I checked, even Mozilla defaults to sending HTML mail.
Keep in mind that business people come from the tradition of using propriety mailers like Lotus ccMail, Lotus Notes, and MSMail, and saw no reason to remove functionality when switching to Internet mail. These people just don't care about the archaic 7-bit Internet olden days. (And, yes, HTML in mail was a design mistake, but as of yet it's the only way to get colored fonts and pictures in your mail, so that's what's used.)
Just make sure include a text/plain part, so if your recpients want to drop the HTML, they have that option.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
before I even read it, so it if you want me to read it, send it plain text.
It'd be interesting to see some form of bbcode for email. It'd do what most people would need it to do and I don't really think one can do a lot of damage with bbcode. Except emotional damage with the [img] tag, but nobody cares about that.
If you're targetting savvy developers (ie, me), then they probably wont read your crappy html mail (and I'd probably unsubscribe even if it were text, but that's really a different issue). But if you were targetting my mom, she'd probably not notice or care. In fact, she might like the html version with its pretty pictures or whatever.
The best way is to send both a text part and an HTML part and let the client decide how they want to see it. I made sure my client automatically shows me the text part if there are both.
-David
There. Now go play some cool javascript games!
Even with my best .muttrc trickery, I've yet to be able to convince mutt to view all html emials in lynx or whatever else. I've got it to pick up most of them, but 1 in 10 I have to view html source.
Also, rendering html in a graphical email client can stillbe troublesome for slower computers.
Pretty Pictures!
P.S. Suggestion: default to plain text because HTML is, in fact, evil.
Speak truth to power.
If you are going to do it, make sure it looks OK without the images. My client gives me the option to load the images and, quite frankly, I never do.
In e-mail, I want the content, not fucking bling-bling.
If I wanted to SEE your product, I'd go you to your web site.
And shit like company banners and the like just piss me off to no end.
Finally, the tracker images. These, like read recipt, are of the devil. Read recipt is disabled in my client. My boss wants to know why I never read any of his e-mails. I tell him I do, but WHEN I read it is none of his fucking buisness.
Same for you. If I catch you tracking when I open an e-mail using something like http:\\server\images\myemailaddy\blank.gif, you'll be filtered. In fact, if I get any kind of weird feeling about the e-mail at all, you'll be filtered.
Make sure you understand that my client may be displayed in a preview frame. Don't expect me to open the item and maximixe it to read it. If it doesn't display properly in the frame, I won't scroll sideways to read it.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Repeat after me:
M U L T I P A R T
Technology is your friend, even if you don't fell like making sense of rfc822. Send both in the same mail.
And don't buy the spam filter argument. While it is true that multipart messages get consistently higher spam scores, if your content is not spammy you are A-OK. If your content is spammy you got a problem on your hand regardless of the TEXT/HTML issue.
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
I've got enough problems without worrying about weird-ass links and IE vulnerabilities. (Sadly, no, I can't avoid using MS products at work.)
Why bulk email HTML newsletters? Send them a link to a page. You can have a number of different access controls on it if it's not supposed to be public, and get the advantage of logging page hits to see who's actually reading it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
offer both ... like everyone else
... think of it like your other homepage
in the distant past, plain text made economic sense in terms of network resources, however, this issue becomes less and less important with each and every day
oh, and clean and efficient HTML always helps,
"multipart/alternative" is your friend.
Only spammers send HTML-only messages these days. In two years, I have received only one useful HTML-only message. BTW, rejecting HTML-only messages is a good way to reduce amount of incoming spam.
You can compose message in HTML and then use lynx to create text/plain part of message.
The right way to do ethics is to forget stupid dogmas like "HTML email is evil" and base your decisions how your actions affect other people. Like a lot of other technologies, HTML email can be misused; specifically, senders can breach security with script-based malware, and privacy with graphic-based tracking cookies. If you don't engage in these abuses yourself, where's the ethical issue?
If you're concerned about security of your own users, you might tell them, "don't accept HTML email". But even that's serious overkill -- Thunderbird is perfectly capable of blocking security and privacy penetration while still accepting HTML email. Outlook is less impressive that way, but Microsoft software is hardly the gold standard for security.
"HTML email is evil" is standard geek bigotry. We're able to get by with pure-text message, anybody who can't is an asshole. Its time to remember that the whole world doesn't revolve around us.
You shouldn't really be worried about looking unprofessional, companies like Apple send out HTML emails.
There's a difference though, between text with HTML used to make it look a bit prettier, and text with HTML used to embed a load of images.
The first case is much more justifiable. You can make links properly, use bold and italics, etc.
The second is less justifiable. Unless you include the images as attachments, a significant portion of your readers will simply not see them - blocking external resources from being loaded is a basic anti-spam measure. Even including them as attachments isn't guaranteed to work, plus you'll piss more people off with the larger size.
There's also technology to think about. The rendering engine included in mail clients often works significantly differently compared with browsers - just try some CSS, for example, and you won't have (or want) a testing lab with all the different mailers available - they are far less homogenous than the browser market.
I agree with the people saying that you should offer a choice between plaintext and HTML. Also make it clear which type of HTML - plain or with images - that your newsletter is when you give them the choice. I'd pick plaintext over gaudy HTML, but plain HTML over plaintext.
One last thought: I'm unsubscribing from practically all the newsletters I can, and replacing them with Atom/RSS feeds where possible. It's simply a much more manageable way to deal with the information overload. By offering newsfeeds, you'll reach more people, and be friendlier to those that would put up with a newsletter grudgingly.
How do I write a python script that will send an html email? i.e. how do you tell the email client that your email is html formatted? I tried just putting html into the body but it didn't work.
Send a plain text body and include a URL for the web version of the newsletter (and optional username+password). By keeping the body plain text and/or include a link to the web version, you increase accessibiliy for lowbandwidth users (modem, GPRS, etc.) and it works for all mail clients. An additional advantage of using the WWW for what it's good at is that you get some (vague) usage statistics.
If your message cannot be conveyed in plain text, then it's probably time to rethink the whole newsletter approach.
Plain text -- it was good enough for Shakespeare.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yes.
Learn to send plain text, or get in my block list.
Especially if your business depends on these e-mails (e.g. sales/marketing promotions), you might want to do a target focus of the e-mails on a sample group. This way, you can gather their feedback and not risk loss of sales.
A colleague at work (in another office) sends daily 'reports' all HTML formatted. It takes so long to read the content of the e-mail because graphics overwhelm the acutal content.The first 20 lines or so is a giant graphic. So I just delete it.
Odd. Very odd. I never have these problems at work (100% Microsoft Products), and at home only when I visit porn sites in IE. Visit a lot of porn, do you? Really and honestly, it's not at all difficult to eliminate most spam and avoid most malicious code. It's sort of like sex: If you have unprotected computer, you may pick up a virus.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Well, even Shakespeare used stage directions. :-)
<aside player="macbeth">Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.</aside>
</exeunt>
I always try to send plain text, unless I need to do something specific. (I'll embed an image in HTML rather than attach the file to a plain text email, for example.)
But I gave up mutt for evolution because so many people send me HTML mail. At some point you kind of have to live in the world as it exists, I think.
I think the world would be a better place if email was just plain text, with file attachments, but most people don't agree, so what can you do?
If you send HTML mail, almost everyone will be able to read it -- that's the main thing. If your boss wants it, you should probably give it to him -- there are more important issues on which you can take a stand.
I use KMail 1.8 and I have it configured to reject and delete all HTML mails. Probably I won't even notice it if you ever send me one. Businesses that use HTML mail ask for bankruptcy.
I get email and news alerts on my pager and phone, html versions are a pain in the ass.
;)
HTML does not belong in emails, unless its porn.
Really and honestly, if you run IE you're contantly chasing it. I just spent an hour on the phone helping a friend get rid of Sober.O.
When I read my mail in EMACS on a Linux box, all that ever happens is I have new viral emails from friends with Windows to add to my collection.
more like they don't
Even though I default to text e-mail and turn off previews in my mail client, I also accept that HTML e-mail has pretty much become the default.
I would suggest that your best option is to offer a choice of text or HTML, or if that seems unwieldy, to poll your client base for their preferences. If most of them want HTML, then that's what you should deliver to them
Asking them first is a good move. It makes them feel that you care about their needs, and in the event that you do go with a regular HTML format it will reassure them that you are not sending something malicious.
As is so often the case, this is a question of communication and marketing, not technology. Your choice, and how you implement it, should be determined by the needs or preferences of your clients, not by geekish outrage.
Personally I prefer either a URL back to your site or to a PDF.
Three Squirrels
>. . . but is it now an outdated concern?
No. There are plenty of reasons to avoid html email. Here's the one that may convince your boss: not everyone *can* read it, even today. At the very least, not everyone who is able to read it will be able to see the html formatting. One of the best things about plain text is that it forces you to format your message in a way that everyone will be able to read.
There are a lot of people who will never see your formatted html: businessmen and geeks using cellphones and PDA's, blind people with text readers, people whose spam filters decide that all html messages are spam, people who don't have computers and use stand-alone email terminals or webtv style appliances, people who use public terminals that have restrictive security settings, people using remote unix servers that lack recent text browsers, and people like me to go out of their way to avoid seeing inline html.
What's more, even if your email is readable and makes it through the spam filters, it will still make life difficult for many of your recipients. Mail sorting routines and client filters may choke or misfile your messages. Text searches will miss your messages. If you send your customers an invoice that can't be found in a search, you'll really piss them off.
Don't waste your time and money creating something that will reach *fewer* of your clients than plain old text.
> Should I trust our client-base to be fully equipped for such a mailer?
No. Most of the people in my office aren't, most by choice. While I'm capable of reading such a mailer, chances are I won't. Around 95% of the html email I receive gets instantly deleted without being read. If you aren't one of my personal friends and you send me html, you're wasting your bandwidth.
>Should I worry about improper delivery marring our professional image?
Yup. And not only improper delivery - even if your message gets through fine, sending people html is likely to annoy them. Sending html email is common to spammers,and amateur would-be-businesses. I've actively made a decision to avoid companies that refuse to send me plain text. (UpgradeSource comes to mind.)
Well, my employer must have an effective virus filter, than. Been a long time since the LAN Shop guys made any noise to us "users" about such issues. Dunno...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Read this comment's heading. Everything else follows in a logic fashion.
r smailaddress@example.net" On that webpage, do not require confirmation, instead unsubscribe the user immediately when the request is made. Say up-front that he will not get any more mail - and stick to this statement! Obviously, don't send mail that he successfully unsubscribed. You may include in that result page a very simple feedback form that asks for the reason of unsubscription.
Always use double opt-in. For user registration with your website, don't make the checkbox [X] send me a monthly newsletter checked by default (like sourceforge does, the fuckers). Give an example how such a would look like, this helps deciding whether it's useful to sign up.
Keep the newsletters short, condense them as much as you can. Ideally it should just be a couple of bullet points that can be fully grasped with a glance. Then add a link to the detailed version on your website.
Never forget the unsubscribe. Make it ultra concise. The shorter, the less problems of comprehension, less chance for things to go wrong. This is best done with such a link: "To unsubscribe, visit http://www.example.com/unsubscribe-newsletter/use
Also, users don't read email newsletters. No, really, they don't. They are one of the most ineffective medium to communicate what you have to say. For all the trouble you're going through, more people are attracted to and read spam than proper newsletters.
Sooner or later, you are going to end up on a distributed spam blacklist because some clueless n00b submitted your newsletter as spam. Plan ahead for this day.
All this advice can be justified by usability science and even common sense. Sorry for the lack of linkage, perhaps someone else can ameliorate.
My suggestion, if your company wants to send nice HTML-based newsletters to customers, is to sign up with many of the opt-in e-mail solution providers like ExactTarget, SilverPop, etc. They make tools for this stuff and have folks who handle all of the deliverability stuff who can consul you.
The purpose of email is communication - never forget that.
So, in order to answer the question "Is sending $FOO in email evil?" answer the question "Is sending $FOO communicating more than text/plain would?"
If all you are communicating is "Don't park in the west parking lot tomorrow because we are going to repaint the lines" then an HTML mail does not communicate any more than a text mail, and so is a bad idea.
If you are communicating "Don't park in the highlighted area <img=foo.gif> because we will be filling in the pothole" then an HTML email may communicate more than text/plain - however is it perhaps better still to put the information up on an internal web page and mail a link?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Most of the proponents of Text-only email commonly ignore usability as a factor in their arguments.
Quite simply, HTML allows for newsletters (and even normal correspondence) to be displayed in a more readable fashion than a text email would be. Ask anyone in the publishing world and they will tell you that a good layout is vital. Many HTML newsletters make good use of columns and colored headings and such.....
And of course, for normal plain email correspondance, bold, italics, underlines, bulleted lists, and even hyperlinks are all vitally useful.
the ASCII ribbon campaign should have ended long ago
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Generally, formatting and graphics help communication. Fonts, graphics, layout, whatever. Ever try to read a man-page and wish that there was some sensible formatting and highlighting? Would Slashdot be useable if it was pure text only? How about the formatting of your newspaper or textbook?
Several years ago there were legitimate worries about client support for HTML email. There were also worries about viruses. For me at least, those days are long gone.
The biggest problem is people abusing HTML email w/a multitude of fonts/graphics/etc - but that's a people problem, not a technology one.
It makes it so easy to filter out the crap. Even better when it includes likes to images! No way am I going to let an email message link back to some server and let the spammer know that he found a real address.
Wondering if HTML will make your message look like spam? Well, I know I'd go here:
http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_0_x.html and search on the html related tests and their scores.
They should tell you what the anti-spam community considers "evil".
I don't see a need for html mail - you want it to look a certain way, give me a blurb to get my interest and then link to the content. My friends do this with interesting links, newsletters I get are like this, I even view Slashdot on the "light" mode to get rid of as much of the clutter as possible. Then I go the the links to see more if I care to.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
I know Mac OS X email supports composing rich text emails. They allow me to have all of the niceties one expects with html email (well, maybe not all, I can think CSS etc..) But anyway it may be a happy in between plain text and html email.
One thing I will plead ignorance on, I have no idea how many clients on the various platforms support rich text email.
I am fairly sure MS Outlook/Outlook Express support them and Entourage, as well as Thunderbird. I want to say AOL mail client does not (at least the last time I looked). Anyone have any clues about others?
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
Apart from me believing HTML in emails is *still pure evil*, maybe this argument helps to come to a decision: whenever my boss sent out HTML emails (mostly real information wanted by the recipients, no advertisments), an intolerable percentage of recipients didn't receive anything because HTML in emails makes spam filters such as Spam Assassin increase the probability of that particular email being classified as spam. When I told her "send it as plain text", it *magically* reached everyone. Now we don't send HTML emails anymore.
Forget HTML -- most people have enough trouble sending well-formatted plain text messages! Again, Outlook Express is at least half the problem.
then use cmd-} to cycle through Parts if you need HTML for some reason. Mostly HTML parts from companies consist solely of images to a graphics layout, complete with webbugs so it's rarely needed.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Talk to your boss about doing both and letting the recipient decide.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
(1)Feed them and pet them and you've pretty much done what they want.
(2) you can sleep with three of them simultaneously and no one cares.
(3) If you're busy or tired, they'll just lick each other.
HTML email still renders unpredictably and is heavily used by spammers. Due to Outlook's inability to not fetch linked images (and frequent security issues), at work we filter all HTML email down to plain text using MailScanner (it's easier than getting people to switch from Outlook).
this is exactly what i was going to suggest, but you beat me to it.
html email is really a waste of bandwidth. do what acm does: email out a quick summary with links, and i'll go peruse as my fancy takes me. no need to waste all that extra bandwidth with formatting (or cpu time with compression). almost all html email that gets sent to me is immediately whisked away to my trash can (there are a few people who i actually want to hear from that still insist on sending html email, there are exceptions to my filtering rules for them).
HTML is the universal data format over the HTTP protocol. Text is the universal data format over the SMTP/POP3/IMAP protocols. Why do you think binaries need to be encoded in email? Because it's an ASCII medium.
People who didn't know the Internet existed before the birth of the WWW think that that's all there is, and that email and everything else runs on top of the WWW. It doesn't.
If I thought morse code was the schweetest form of communication, and sent out all my emails in dots and dashes, that wouldn't make them not evil. It would still be an annoying and inappropriate use of the medium.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
If you properly MIME encode the email, and provide a plain text alternative, you don't have to care whether or not the recipients will be able to receive it.
Honestly, you've got more to worry about with AOL thinking everything under the sun is spam (seriously, they're a big problem for legitimate mailers).
Gabriel Ricard
Newspapers neither cost more nor take longer to read the more images they contain.
Going to a movie theatre doesn't include a hidden bug at the start of the movie that confirms to some marketing droid that I'm a real person and they should feel free to spam my future visits with an extra 30 minutes of commercials before the movie starts.
And speaking as a former modem user who hasn't had broadband for that long, I promise you Slashdot is perfectly usable and just as informative/interesting with images disabled.
The grandparent was right on the money. E-mail is a text medium. If you can't tell me something through that medium, then chances are I don't want your e-mail. In fact, and this is a very good reason that businesses should not send HTML e-mails without an explicit request, your e-mail will get a huge negative score on my Bayesian anti-spam filter just for having it. That applies whether it's alone or combined with a separate text-only version, though if the text-only version matches the HTML content closely the penalty isn't so great. Moreover, even if it gets through the filter, it'll get rendered as plain text anyway, and therefore probably look worse than it would have done if you'd just sent me that in the first place. It's not exactly likely to improve your sales/feedback level/customer satisfaction/whatever on either count...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
That says it all. You can present your ideas for consideration, if you work for the type who's willing to accept the input without marking you as a rebelious sot who need to be taught a lesson. But after the discussion, either take the check and do the work or find another job. If you aren't willing to shut up and carry on with the company plan, you can be replaced by one of several Microsoft programs.
Not that I'm trying to slam you, I read html mail as text on my personal e-mail. But html mail at work is a requirement, and a one of the lesser standards that I'm willing whore out for a cut of the pie. If you can present your reasons in a calm business case style Powerpoint brain dump void of combativeness, you've got a better shot than shouting "HTML IS EVIL" to the PHB who probably just want pretty picture to go to customer.
Dogs don't cry.
It's legal to keep a dog chained up at your house.
A dog's disposition stays the same all month long.
Dogs agree that you have to raise your voice to get your point across.
Dogs never need to examine the relationship.
Dogs love long car trips.
Dogs understand that instincts are better than asking for directions.
Dogs do not hate their bodies.
Dogs love it when your friends come over.
Dogs don't care if you use their shampoo.
Dogs think you sing great.
Dogs don't let magazine articles guide their lives.
Dogs are excited by rough play.
Dogs don't notice if you call them by another dog's name.
Dogs don't want to know about every other dog you ever had.
Dogs don't get mad at you when you pet another dog.
Dogs don't shop.
Dogs understand that flatulence is funny.
Dogs can appreciate excessive body hair.
Anyone can get a good looking dog.
Dogs enjoy heavy petting in public.
Dogs find you amusing when you're drunk.
Dogs love it when you leave your clothes on the floor.
A dog's time in the bathroom is limited to a quick drink.
Dogs never expect flowers on Valentine's Day.
Dogs never expect you to call them.
Dogs seldom outlive you.
Dogs won't hold out on you to get a new car.
Dogs don't get mad at you if you forget their birthday.
Dogs don't mind if you give their offspring away.
If A dog is gorgeous, other dogs don't hate it.
If A dog leaves, it won't take half of your stuff.
If a dog smells another dog on you, they don't get mad, they just think it's interesting.
If you bring another dog home, your dog will happily play with both of you.
If you pretend to be blind, your dog can stay in your hotel room for free.
No dog will ever wake you up at night to ask, "If I died, would you get another dog?"
The later you are, the more excited your dog is to see you.
When a dog gets old and starts to snap at you incessantly, you can shoot it.
No dog ever bought a Kenny G or Hootie & the Blowfish album.
No dog ever put on 100 pounds after reaching adulthood.
Dogs never criticize.
Dogs are always ready to go 24 hours a day.
Dogs never want foot rubs.
Dogs don't need 500 pairs of shoes.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I do a weekly salesflyer email that reachs about 70000 people that are interested in DIY speaker building and pro sound(ie, technical but not necessarily computer-savy). about 99.9% of them choose to get the html version, even though about 10% of them have mailreaders that mangle it enough that they use the "Click here if everything is messed up" link I put at the top.
It's not terribly graphics heavy, the main reason is for layout & product pictures, plus the ease of having links instead of having to deal with "that url didn't work because my mailreader stuck a CRLF in the middle".
Google does html mail. Google doesn't do evil. Therefore html mail is not evil.
I have procmail setup to filter all messages that are content type text/html directly to the spam box. It doesn't get read.
However, if you send a multipart/alternative message with a text/html section AND a text/plain section, it is likely to make it to my inbox.
Oh, and don't try to be sneaky and send a multipart/alternative without a text/plain section. That gets filtered too.
See RFC 1521 and RFC 2046.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
Rule number one: you are not your user.
Don't ask us geeks. Ask normal people.
Nielsen Norman Group publishes two sets of guidelines for email usability.
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/newsletters/
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/confirmation/
* Choice is best.
* If it looks broken, they'll notice and hate it.
* The first few lines and the subject/sender have to make the case for reading it at all in the age of spam.
These reports cost money but they are still much cheaper than losing customers.
If an html email has images, I won't see them. Spammers use images and such to verify that you've read their spam, resulting in an increase in spam to your address, either from them or people they sell their "verified" lists to.
If you send html email, it should at least have no images. Most of the personal and mailing list emails I get are plain text. Most of the spam I get is html with images. Most (maybe 2/3) of the newsletters I get are also html with images, but they also look like crap with those images blocked. Overall, the most important emails I've received have never been in html.
Professionals use plain text. Advertisers and newsletters containing advertisements use html. And Outlook newbies send rich text documents encapsulated a Microsoft TNEF encoded file called winmail.dat, only viewable by other users of Outlook.
My guess is that your boss wants to send HTML email for the presentation benefits - it can look COOL!
I filter out HTML email, so if I was one of your customers, I wouldn't ever see it. However, if you sent me a PDF file, with a covering message in plain email text, then I'd be much more likely to read the PDF. Furthermore, unlike HTML, PDF layout can be specified in such a way that it will appear ~identical on all systems.
which is why you should send them all pdf files
I can tell you that several ISP's in Denmark have begun collective filtering for SPAM, one of the types of mails hit is HTML mail and as a user you're not even allowed to set your security level or what type of mail to let through so peoples mail get filtered w/o them knowing - I have had several mails to me disappear because of such measures - so I would definitely try to find an alternative in case this trend grows.
One option would be to send people a link to an optional download/read online page.
Hope you find the right solution.
HTML email is still evil, as far as I'm concerned. I don't send it, and it gets deleted immediately if it arrives in my inbox. Mailing lists that don't give me a choice between text and HTML email will not be subscribed to. I usually read mail in Emacs using VM anyway, but when I do use something like Apple's Mail client, I have image loading turned off (I don't need people tracking what mail I read by inserting a tracker in it.)
But as many others have said, I'm one of those old crusty programmers that prefers plain text over HTML for most things. The average business user, and most non-business users, don't know the difference and don't care.
You need to consider how your users deal with email. People sending emails tend to think as if the people receiving it will only be reading their email. The truth is that most business people have lots and lots and lots of email to wade through and they triage their email brutally.
You're competing with a lot of other email so you need to not look like spam, keep it short, and get to the point. Colourful shiny things have an important place in marketing but email doesn't seem like a medium well suited to that approach.
L.
At the company I work for, we send out a LOT of requested emails every night, across a range of different subjects. And no, its not spam, every one has been requested as part of a paid subscription package.
Clients can have them sent in plain text or HTML format. The HTML format looks pretty, but doesn't contain any attachments, or images etc so that the recipients email client doesn't need to download anything else [this was originally done as people would read them at home a lot, and the constant 'connecting to the internet' to get an image etc was causing negative feedback].
Time has shown that HTML emails can cause problems with spam filters - its only a very small percentage etc but you quite often have to go through the logs to confirm it was sent to the client.
Now for the important point - I've made the following VERY clear to the Marketing department :
If your boss wants to use HTML, fine its his decision - sometimes in a job you have to accept practices you won't always like. However, make it clear to him that there will be occasions that the email won't get to the recipient etc.; otherwise you will get the rough end of it when clients complain about not getting their email.
I use it, but only cause I have to. HTML is meant for the WEB and not for E-mail. Many readers have issues with it and also since it is a e-mail noone takes the time to make sure screen readers for the blind can read these e-mails. Marketing needs to KNOW this stuff. They can't just do up a slick HTML E-mail and send it out and assume everyone will be able to read it. While it's likely most corporate users will sue a client capable of it, not everyone will. I know some people who still swear by Pine and Elm for mail readers. I also tend to think that HTML screws up mail digests from listserv's as I can never read the digets, but I can always see the web archive.
Gorkman
Modern GroupWise does indeed support HTML E-Mail. The person in the parent post either has an ancient version of GroupWise, or the admin has configured it not to permit HTML E-Mail. But GroupWise has *supported* it since v5.5EP (current is v6.5).
HTML email is bad netiquette, many filters (either on the client or the server side) reject it (or consider it spam) and many people (like me) just hate garbage^W HTML emails.
Mind Booster Noori
At work we use a reporting package to do desktop publishing-style layouts from SQL data. It attempts to render something to be printed on the screen into HTML. Using a grid layout. It's absolutely terrible and paragraphs often go missing. The source is impossible to read and is 'standards compliant' only in the fact that it's consistent with itself. ;)
If HTML email is bad, that stuff's the antichrist.
...so my spamassassin setup can mark your newsletter appropriately as spam.