HTML email: friend or foe?
JWZ asked recently how ubiquitous support for HTML mail is today in the various mail clients being used. Not surprisingly, many of the comments ended up missing his point entirely, resulting in this comment of his and someone else who saw the humor in the responses. Many of the comments ended up discussing why they don't like HTML email, and there were no surprises:
- To avoid spam
- To avoid “bloat“, large embedded images in the message content or signature
- A seemingly moral objection against “color-coded responses“ and “pretty fonts“
Although I personally do enjoy HTML email, I am aware that this is not universal. I am also curious how common are two things, separately:
- Mail clients who simply can't render it, even via an external viewer somehow integrated into the client
- Users who actively avoid HTML email for various reasons
Like JWZ, I suspect that #1 is low, but I'd also be interested in seeing some statistics on #2 -- is it that those who actively avoid it happen to be a vocal minority, or is statistically quite common? Some folks certainly think #2 is common, calling plain text “the preferred format the world over“, of course they do have a somewhat self-selected audience :-). I'm guessing that #2 is a significant enough population (even among those who use Outlook) because features exist in Outlook to help support that stance. One of the Exchange lists on the net that I'm subscribed to even bounces any multipart/alternative mail, only allowing text/plain through.
Anyway, the whole discussion reminded me that it's probably worth discussing some of the features Outlook and Exchange have in regard to plain text/HTML emails:
