[geeks] Anti-html Letter

[James Sharp]

> On Wed, Feb 20, 2002 at 04:00:13PM -0500, Mike Nicewonger wrote:
>
> > > [anti-HTML-mail response]
> > While I agree with your responce and often respond the same way I them end
> > up having to explain to the clueless $LUSER why this is so.
>
> I don't bother explaining.  If they won't just accept that I won't read
> that crap then that's their problem.

I dunno about you, but if someone just barks "DON'T DO THAT" at me without
giving me a reasonable explanation, I'm quite likely to blow it off and go
on....now if they give me a reasonable explaination, then when it comes
time for me to do whatever again, I'll think back "hey, someone told me
not to do that because it might cause the end of the world".

So...  Reasons for not sending HTML.

1) Size.  Depending on what mailer you're using to send your HTML mail,
your 12 line message can suddenly get pumped up to 70 or 80K with all of
the HTML tags, fonts, javascript, whatever.  Sure, 80K may not sound like
much, but when you send it to a mailing list of 250 people, you end up
with 80K * 250 (20M) of outgoing mail that the mail server has to
processs.  So now your 12 line (which would have been 3K with no HTML)
message went from 750K total to 20MB.

2) Rendering.  Not everyone uses an HTML capable mail program.  And even
those that do, their mailer could render the HTML differently than what
you intended.  What looks like a nice neat little table and pretty fonts
in Outlook looks like a bad ransom note in Eudora.

3) Blocking.  More and more MTAs are implementing filtering & blocking of
HTML mail to help cut down on the Windoze viruses.  So you send your neat
& nifty looking HTML mail to someone only to have it bounce or get
filtered into nothingness.  You then have to turn of HTML in your mailer
anyway.