NYCPHP Meetup

[P Yurt]

I get newsletters and flyers which have a picture based layouts.
If I turn
off HTML I cannot get a quick look at the page a know anything. 

To me this is a case where HTML mail is desirable and
beneficial. I am not
so sure I want my mail client doing AJAX round trips. There is
way too much
spam already, let alone spam which has dynamic content
updates...that
worries me. 

Paul Yurt
The more credible, accurate & honest Web: www.mastermoz.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org
[mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org] On
Behalf Of David Krings
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 4:19 PM
To: NYPHP Talk
Subject: Re: [nycphp-talk] Send HTML mail with Javascript
function

Mark Armendariz wrote:
>  
>> Aniesh joseph wrote:
>>> Hello All,
>>>
>>> I am trying to send one mail with HTML content. To do this,
I have 
>>> added HML header to mail function.
>>>
>> I really wonder why? HTML is for port 80, not 21. HTML in 
>> emails is IMHO the biggest waste ever. 
> 
> I'm not sure I can agree, David.  HTML is merely a markup
language meant
for
> improving how information looks and definitely has a place in
our most
used
> means of commication.  We have things such as bold, italics,
listings, etc
> in all printing apps because how they help us communicate. 
Sure, some can
> be mocked in plain text but what's so wrong with someone
selecting text
and
> hitting ctrl-b to bold the text and having a standard any
email client /
> browser will understand.
> 

Those font attributes are in printing apps because they are
printing 
apps. Email is and always was intended and therefore designed to
handle 
flat ASCII.
The main reason why I recommend against HTML in emails is that
most 
popular email clients apparently have problems with either
displaying or 
securely handling it (bad handling: Eudora, security problems
see e.g. 
here http://tinyurl.com/267we7 [second page, middle]).

You also refer to very basic font styling, which makes me think
if there 
is a need to an email specific markup that does only that, but
not all 
the stuff that HTML and ECMAScript can do. Let's say, there
would be 
such an ESML (email styling markup language), email clients
could simply 
ignore anything else but this.

I had frequent problems with HTML emails and finally got
convinced that 
turning all this eye candy crap off is the way to go. Since then
I never 
came across a single occasion where I thought, gee, some bold or
colour 
is really needed here.

In regards to the original post, when HTML in the email isn't
direly 
necessary (which I think it isn't) then the problem goes away,
because 
it never occurs. Avoidance is a valid approach to problem
handling.

David

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