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Thread ID: 34848	2003-06-25 17:28:00	Microsoft dumbs HTML Emails by defaults.	E.ric (351)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
155094	2003-06-25 17:28:00	How on earth can we bring it to the attention of Microsoft that they set their Email programs to stupid HTML by default, by that way I mean black text on white background, I would not worry on this issue apart from the fact that any HTML Email is about two and half times the size of a standard plain text Email, and that it also has as I am lead to believe the potential to carry a virus . Some HTML Email as it goes through Yahoo Email group, gets loaded with a picture advertisement, so if you are reading the Email on line your Email pulls a picture off Internet for the advertisement in your Email, together with the extra large size Email, black text on white 2 . 5 times bigger Emails, is it designed this way by Microsoft to deliberately slow down Internet? You can help too by setting up your Email program the same way I set mine up and “return Emails in the same format they came in” and change the default color from black to some other color, when you replay to a email that has been sent in stupid HTML format that you can not tell it apart from a standard plain text Email until you reply to it and notice the color change in the text of the Email . You can then write and tell the person to set up their program to save a useless percentage of Internet bandwidth, or they can add color to their Email and have some excitement in their Email . That “useless percentage of Internet bandwidth” by the way multiplied by the millions of people sending stupid black text on white background Emails when plain text Email will do just as good, must add up to something, How can we get Microsoft to either add some color into their HTML Emails by default and live in a nice colorful Email world, or better still, get them to by default setting, set up their Email program to plain text format? If I know my luck on the time wasted on this posting, I must go now and back my head on the wall hard . :)	E.ric (351)
155095	2003-06-25 20:57:00	> Some HTML Email as it goes through Yahoo Email group, > gets loaded with a picture advertisement, so if you > are reading the Email on line your Email pulls a > picture off Internet for the advertisement in your > Email, together with the extra large size Email, > black text on white 2 . 5 times bigger Emails, is it > designed this way by Microsoft to deliberately slow > down Internet? And in this observation, you show exactly why those that provide free email want the world to use HTML . Not happy with having got enough money to keep a starving 3rd world child alive from you, M$ want to make sure that people use "clever" HTML mail is used so that email can be added to with ads and so forth much easier . It also makes the "products" look slicker if HTML becomes the norm . . . . >as I am lead to believe the potential to carry a virus . The thing that bothers me about HTML mail is the spam acknowledgement thing, the fact that most people use crappy email clients that are configured by default to load images requested in the body of HTML email from the net . These images not only make the SPAM look slicker, but are logged by the server . So what you say? Well these logs show without a dought that spam_victom_4@some_ISP_somewhere . com has infact looked at the said mail, so why not send spam_victom_4@some_ISP_somewhere . com another 10 tommorow??? Personally, i hate it, i don't see the point . Slickness is no match for functionality . . Chris	Chris (3346)
155096	2003-06-26 08:10:00	Look mate, I think you really need to take a good look over your message before posting. Much of it doesn't make sense at all. For one thing, how do you know Microsoft uses an email program to send out their subscription-based emails? It is far more likely that they use a simple internal form, where the person(s) in charge of the email enter the text for the necessary places in various different input boxes, along with special tags, much like the bold, italics, hyperlink tags etc used in this forum. They would then submit the page, which would be processed by some fancy ASP.NET code, and sent to a distribution email address, which sends the email on to everyone in it's "address book", as such, much like a list manager. Furthermore, black text on a white background just so happens to be what plain text is! I don't know why you keep going on about "black text on white background" (notice the mistake in that sentence?) when that is what plain text email largely is, and HTML could vary greatyl - ie blue text on a yellow background, with a tiled semi-transparent image that adds a nice washed out effect... or something like that. I would also like to point out that smart users of the Hotmail service should use Outlook Express to send their emails. When you do this, no ads are placed at the bottom of your message (for example, the "Get MSN8 today!" line of text placed if you send your email via a browser, by logging in at www.hotmail.com). "your Email pulls a picture off Internet for the advertisement" Well, in response to that, I only have to say one thing. That does not add much at all to the size of the email. All it adds is a very small amount of HTML code, along the lines of ad.mydomain.com In fact, the only time an image will up the size of your email greatly would be if you embed an image, which the vast majority of email senders do not do, as it can in cases add extraordinary amounts of data to an email. You'll note that the HTML emails Microsoft send out only make a reference to the image, they do not embed it. Why am I saying this? Because your third paragraph makes a reference to pulling it off the internet, which does not add a great deal of data to your image. Now, about setting up your email program so that it changes the colour of the text when replying to an HTML email... according to your train of thought, it should be very easy to tell, because HTML emails are "2.5 times bigger". Unfortunately, that is not always the case. If someone send an email in HTML format, but only sends text (much like me, except I embed a very small notification image for my signature), the size will not differ much from that of a plain text email. And in the cases where an email would be very much larger, and contain many references to images, there would be not much you can do by telling them to set their email client to send messages in plain text format. The chances are that the sender of that message is either a spammer, or a list manager (newsletters etc) - many of which do not accept replies specifically to the email address it is sent from, and furthermore would not care about one complaint from that many who make use of that particular newsletter. And how about the "useless percentage of Internet bandwidth... [from] the millions of people sending stupid black text on white background Emails"? Well, once again, black text on a white background does not deviate much from that plain text emails look like, and the majority of emails sent in HTML format that consist of mainly text will not add up to much more than the same amount of bandwidth used by the same amount of plain text emails. What's more, this extra bandwidth, compared to what is available around the entire world, will not make a difference. Are you specifically worried that the websites you visit will load that little bit slower? The amount of bandwidth available for use on the internet will always exceed that which is available to you to use, even if you could get gigabit internet, unless there are extreme circumstances that are worse than the hacking attempt which shut down seven of the thirteen core domain servers of the internet. "How can we get Microsoft to either add some color into their HTML Emails by default and live in a nice colorful Email world" Well, according to what you say, they already do, with a nice load of images. While I realise that this was a personal opinion, until you decided to post it here, in which the circumstances open you up to a whole array of responses, your best option would be to inform Microsoft of your concern. Now, your last line, was it meant to be: "If I know my luck, in the time I wasted on this thread, I must now go and bang my head hard on the wall"? Sorry if I sound extremely critical, but when I write long responses like this, it's usually because I have a strong opinion on something. Quite personally, I feel that plain text is hideous, because of the standard Times New Roman font. If, however, Verdana is available, I'll be all but against plain text email, unless it cannot support hyperlinks, and HTML allows for much nicer looking emails. For instance, I'm going to unsubscribe from the 15Seconds (http://www.15seconds.com) newsletter, because they dumped the HTML option and moved everything to plain text. Much uglier in my opinion, much harder to discern the different sections, and much less convenient for me.	agent (30)
155097	2003-06-26 08:42:00	The aim of the message was to point out a problem with HTML Emails. If you don't mind, why don't you go to "pressf7" website were the aim of the web site would be to correct spelling mistakes and maybe grammer ones as well.	E.ric (351)
155098	2003-06-26 08:49:00	Why sure. I'm happy to inform you, that you could write your message in Microsoft Word, hit F7 when finished, then paste it in here. I'm sure a little bit of polite rudeness doesn't hurt me. I don't take it personally, it was just my mood at the time. How about you?	agent (30)
155099	2003-06-26 08:50:00	it's gettn hot in here...	promethius (1998)
155100	2003-06-26 10:45:00	Don't know about anyone else but I view ALL emails I get in fixed width (courier new) "black on white" no matter what format it was sent in. If I'm using webmail I just take it how it is. If you don't like the Times New Roman used in plain text emails. Set the client to use a different font, simple as that.	-=JM=- (16)
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