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Yes, but you don't get the flashy iChat Theatre and screensharing stuff.

Yes you can, I use my google account to have video talks and have played with backdrops and screen-sharing. Obviously the other person has to be using iChat as well

Edited 2007-12-06 21:06

You forgot to mention that you can use a Google Talk account with iChat, and then you have the power of gmail accounts and friends

Here in Finland MSN Messenger is the most widely used service too, and personally I don't know of a single person who'd use AIM, Google Talk, ICQ or anything like that

well now you do and all of my friends here use gmail or ICQ. Granted we all have a msn account a well but i use iChat a LOT with friends just like skype.

cheers

//Vic

Mmm, browser... you mean wget plus cat, right?
:P

I have to agree with both sides about the "stationary" thing.

I haven't used Leopard. So, I really don't know what they mean by stationary, but if it is anything like Outlook's concept, it really is annoying when someone uses a stationary theme out of the box. They are so ugly. Considering this is Apple, I concede that if the two concepts are basically equivalent, Apple generally does a much better job at avoiding ugly. I have also seen some very professional stationary themes made by individuals, but in general, I wish that people wouldn't use them.

With that being said, I have to agree with Adam. I just don't get the aversion by some geeks to HTML in email. Plain text just can't do everything. Just because some people use HTML to embed pictures (and stuff) in some retarded [spam] chain letters (among other things) does not mean that HTML is evil. I avoid the garbage, and I enjoy the extra functionality that HTML offers.

I'll tell you why. When I spend time in Australia, my bandwidth is metered. Most Australians don't have unlimited bandwidth. That means that HTML emails is actually costing me directly. It would be like telemarketers being allowed to call your cellphone in the US (they legally can't under most conditions).

The extra bandwidth that HTML email uses (more than double, since the original message is also usually present in plaintext form) wastes my bandwidth which I have a limited amount of.

I'd rather use that bandwidth for browsing, downloads, etc.

Likewise when I'm using a mobile connection where I get charged for bits I download I also don't want to be charged extra because of the wasteful practices of some people.

That is why HTML email is "evil"; though evil is the wrong in my opinion.

not to mention some people "love" to use "fancy" styles when writing mail.

Only if you download the images, which few email clients do by default now, including Mail.app, which is what we're discussing here, and Outlook, Windows Mail, Gmail, Live Mail, etc. In that case, you should also stop using *all* email, because attachments can be a real bitch.

No, that isn't true. HTML email is a lot more bloated than plaintext. It's over double the size alone just for an HTML formatted message.

The arguments about stationary apply equally to the HTML and not just to the images.

Correct, but you're generally talking about bytes or kilobytes more at most - only the actual markup. It would only be inline images that make any significant size. If that's your concern, make it a mission to abolish attachments that are unnecessarily large. PDFs, Word docs, hell, even most spreadsheets could probably be expressed in plain text files, and that would save you several cents more!!

Yes, because sane email programs send you both plain text and the html.
The argument that it eats up bandwidth is bullshit though. It's not 1990 anymore, the few Kb email takes is a drop in the ocean compared to the bandwidth taken up by , for example, browsing osnews or youtube or myspace etc etc.
It's not mine or anyone else's problem that your ISP is screwing you by metering your bandwidth.
Sure, HTML mail can suck badly when people go overboard but so can anything else. It's not an HTML mail problem, it's a people problem.

HTML email allows embedding "cid" images. The markup refers to the embedded cid images. Fortunately this kind of email does not occur frequently from what I can tell.

I don't have anything against HTML email in general. It is abused quite badly though. It gives people with no idea of what works visually too much flexibility. Companies normally have style guides but you end up having people insisting on inserting their product / company / brand logo in every email. This is terrible if you value server space in particular but also tacky.

You end up where people start thinking of emails like company letterheads. Company letterheads are for official communication. Email is less formal due to how easy it is to fire an email out.

I would like an email client that allowed you to specify styles and limit people to using those like you can do with javascript based WYSIWYG HTML editors. That way the company style guide can be enforced you don't get 16 point italic script fonts etc. but you allow people to produce consistently readable well formatted email.

Well, then there is a lot of these elitists out there, including me and almost all the people I exchange e-mails with (no, we're not living in anybody's mother's basement). I always set every and each e-mail to be displayed as plain text and if it's unreadable, I won't place any effort to read it. I just don't care what they have to say if they can't say it in text, only mixed with useless tags and flashy and colored junk. On the extremely rare occasions I'm still curious about it, I read it and begin my reply with telling the sender to use plain text when sending e-mail to me, they can use their tacky html decorations for the rest of the poor fellas they send e-mail to.

Simply not using HTML doesn't make you elitist. Hating it without valid reason does.





Obviously you don't use email for work then, or in any professional sense. If I got a response email like that from a company I was patronizing, I would cancel their service immediately.

I don't hate HTML, I just don't like it being used in e-mails.



On the contrary.



Sorry, but this is falls into my definition of elitist On the other hand, I have to congratulate you, since you seem to have so many clients that canceling one of them for such a reason wouldn't hurt your businness.

Edited 2007-12-07 06:23

Uh, dude, you totally misunderstood my comment. I'm saying if I business who I HIRED to work for me - if I were the client - refused to accept my emails because they didn't like that I put an inline image in it, I would cease to do business with them.

Please read the comment again. It will sound much different.

I'll tell you why - pink italic text on purple backgrounds.

Just who are you emailing, blixel???

Oh, it's always the aunts, who tend to misuse the technology to make things LESS readable and make the presentation WORSE.

I saw the comment about stationary and immediately thought of those messages I used to get from my aunts. You know, the emails with the pink curlicued text (or several different fonts and colors, just to be shocking!) that come with fifty FWD: and RE: markers, and then some pictures of babies and puppies and kittens. Generally these are followed by an admonishment to forward this message to twenty people in the next hour to show them somebody loves them.

They stopped sending me those things when I forwarded those chain letters back to THEM the requisite fifty-some-odd times.

Of course, they probably think I hate kittens now.

Edited 2007-12-06 21:01

People still send those?

I'd say idiots who install incredimail; the source of all email problems and many hours spent trying to fix up peoples installation of Outlook Express - because their dipsey daughter decided to have a 'cool candy coated emails' to send to their friends.

Like I said with a previous post, give an inch and the end user will take a mile; give HTML to an end user and it goes from being a nice way to add emphasis to emails to completely abusing the features that are made available.

You can't educate these people, they only way to ensure it doesn't happen - don't provide the feature in the first place.

Edited 2007-12-06 21:16

//You can't educated these people,//

Apparently not!

I see this at the software company I work for, there are some ladies in the house that really like this combination (2 or 3, not all of them). And they always like to make gossipy announcements with these fonts and background.

The good part is that when it comes to work this isn't used.

Anyhow, worse than that, there's some guy in the organization that collected news items to keep us software engies up to date (some of us wouldn't read the news otherwise). Guess what we get, a 50 line of text with interesting headlines, formated in a 1MiB html email. What makes it so big is an ugly orange bar the guy uses to separate the "News title" from the actual headline items.

My quota at work is 50MB, and doing cleaning up every week is not fun.

Still, if it still has its purposes when used correctly. Those two scenarios I wrote about are not the case (at least for me).

I'll tell you why music is evil: Britney Spears.
The logical conclusion of me not liking Britney Spears is of course that all music is evil. Everywhere. Always.

Come on now, you can't tell me that "Toxic" doesn't make your toes start a-tappin!

Because html email does not solve a problem. Like I said, it might be nice for a birthday invitation or something (but my personal value system dictates that birthday invitations are sent via paper mail or extended personally), but for day-to-day use of email, which constitutes 99% of email usage, it is utterly, utterly pointless and does not add anything to the overall functioning of email.

This is apart from technical reasons like different rendering engines rendering html mail different from one another (or the evil thing where html emails do not render correctly when you do not have the proper width set, or add a horizontal scrollbar), or the fact that html mails take longer to load, require extra clicks like telling it to download images. On top of that, we have the obvious security issues which rear their ugly head on not only Windows, but also OS X.

Edited 2007-12-06 19:20 UTC

Know what else doesn't solve a problem? CSS. HTML outputs plain old Times New Roman in most browsers, and that would be perfectly readable.

Come to think of it, colored clothes don't solve a problem - all clothes in white or tan - whatever cottom is - would be just fine.

Let's get rid of spices, the only problem solved by food is nutrition, and we don't need it to taste good to meet our caloric and nutritional requirements.

Obviously, the point here is that the world is not black and white. HTML email does solve problems for most people: inline images are useful and quicker, formatted text grabs attention and higlights important text, etc.

In fact, if you ever use bold tags in your articles, you ought to understand why some people believe that the ability to use HTML in email is worthwhile.

So if my problem is that I want to present an image to someone inline with instructional text, what is the solution? Suck it up and attach a rich text document at 200K or just go HTML email and do it in 40K?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

looks like a geek, smells like a geek, reads like a geek... yup. its a geek.

going back to the point I made that programmers/geeks think of the quickest way to do a job when 'normal' sociable people prefer the nicest way.

By that doctrine, the web should also be plaintext.

It amazes me how a fellow self-proclaimed UI Analyst can pass such a harsh and definite judgment on HTML email.

Creatures who are color blind would most likely never miss color. In fact it's most likely impossible for them to comprehend color.

HTML email can do precisely what colors and smells do for us in real life. Not to mention extra features such as embedding links etc. I don't know about you Thom but I would rather live in a world with Color than without one.

P.S. When I say color in the real world I'm not talking about colored text in html. I'm talking about the extra sensory elements that you can add to the entire experience.

Like I said, there are indeed specific use cases where it makes sense. However, most emails sent today (if you disregard spam) are short emails along the lines of "Jim, did you finish that report?" or "Jack, did you contact that client?" or "Wanna go see a movie tonight?" - I'd wager a bet to say that 90-95% of email consist of those types of emails (wild guess, no facts to back it up). What, exactly, can html email do for this common use of emailing?

Exactly, nothing. And hence, for 90-95%, it serves absolutely no purpose AT ALL, and seeing people regularly abuse the technology out of ignorance (I don't blame them! I do a lot of ignorant things too in other fields!), it is simply better to restrict the ability to put flashy colours and such in emails.

Browse MySpace or the Dutch equiv. Hyves.nl for a while, and you'll understand.

When you get those, just right click on the e-mail, mark it as junk. Pretty soon you don't see those anymore. I don't know if they are blocked from downloading to my Mac or not. But I don't see them anymore.

The difference for what I see on Mac Mail (web based) vs the same inbox on my iMac is amazing how much **#*# I don't see in Mail (on my iMac).

So you're one of those people who use pink letter paper and spray it with perfume are you?

Yeah like LSD

It has nothing to do with elitism. It has to do with the fact that it is bloat; what does it add to the conversation by the fact that the mail has 40 different types of fonts used for a 4 line email? nothing is achieved. Infact, the clarity is made worse and quite frankly, within an enterprise setting, its yet more features which distract the end user from the core purpose of email.

I've received html emails, and I'm on a metered internet connection, every bit of garbage added to the email by virtue of their 'creative juices' - it costs me. Run a USENET server with, in some cases, groups with 20,000 articles; imagine if each one was HTML, and added another 2K to the article, thats another 40MB, then over a server with 50,000 news groups - it makes it even worse.

Its the old story of 'look after the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves' - by themselves they aren't bad but imagine when it is extrapolated over several hundreds of thousands of end users.

THose of us who hate HTML email (along with USENET) don't hate it because it makes things interesting, we hate it because people completely lose the plot on what is acceptable to send, and what isn't. Give the end user an inch, and they'll take a mile.

Meh. A few people abuse it, so wipe it out for everyone everywhere.

Your response is essentially "users are too dumb to know any better (than I do), so let's take it away from them." That's elitist in my book.

ps. I've never in my life seen an emal with 40 fonts. 99% of HTML email I receive is one font, one background. Hardly the mess you're painting.

Of course, what benefit does it add for YOU? nothing, absolutely nothing. Is it necessary to change the fonts - does it some how magically change or improve your email? of course not!

I receive emails for information purposes. I get an email to inform me of something; how the email looks by way of font, colour, layout or what not has no impact; infact, if you send me a candy coated email that looks like a teeny bopper has written it, it goes instantly into the trash.



Yes, users are dumb. For some here they seem to have never gone through the stark realisation of the world as it is. Most people hit it when they're 19, sometimes in their mid twenties, and in my case, when I was 9. Realising that the world isn't so fabulous; basically that moment when life crushes ones own spirit.

A realisation that people are morons, and it isnt elitist, it being a realist. Look around you, we have people who have children who can barely support themselves - then they turn around and demand hand outs from the government. We have people know full well what the cause of obesity is but think its because of everything else besides eating too much and doing too little exercise.

So no, I'm not an elitist, just observing mans ability to take stupidity to all new lows, and worse, the seemly celebration of ignorance which popular culture seems to perpetuate.



Then obviously you haven't been out for long. I've seen HTML not only utilised, but abused on a mass scale. Its like going from being a moderate gamer to the gamer who plays a game for 70 hours straight (and then subsequently dies - occurred in Korea to a young lad)

My company has received 6.2 million emails since late 2004, accordingly to our mail gateway. Of those emails, approx 85% have been rejected before delivery to our mail server. If they are massively loaded with abusive HTML, they are rejected. Most HTML emails are not, they are perfectly acceptable.

I've been out long enough to understand HTML email and what it is, as well as when rogue admins decide they will enforce their whim upon their users. We know better, so everyone must alter their way to suit us. I think it's lame. If you can't learn to meet your users' requirements, you have no business being a network administrator.

By the way, I can't help but think this is a bit like the DMCA argument: since a few users will pirate this DVD, we'll lock it down for everyone, since obviously, no one can be trusted.

We don't refuse delivery based on mime type, we don't alter emails at the server. Large companies just don't work that way.

Meh. A few people abuse it, so wipe it out for everyone everywhere.

I would support such an initiative.

This whole thing might make an interesting separate thread, with a poll. I'd be voting for "hate html mail and would prefer never to receive any ever again."

Spam uses a large chunk of bandwidth. The use of HTML mail makes it more than twice as large as it needs to be. The same can be said for the many legitimate messages that go around. They are using more than double the bandwidth they need to. It doesn't hurt too much with a single message, but email and spam is never "a single message."

HTML mail is especially aggravating when it's sent to a mailing list whose archives can be browsed online. Odds are it won't be rendered correctly for people browsing the archive, and is therefore mostly useless (not to mention it will most likely simply be ignored.)

Finally, there are still folks who use the console for lots of stuff, including reading email. HTML email is an impediment.

Some of these reasons obviously aren't going to apply to you (console email client) but some at least apply to everyone (mountains of bandwidth). Even if you don't agree you at least have to see where people are coming from when they dislike it.

I too refuse to read HTML formatted email. If my livelihood depended on email (and replying to every single message) I might rethink that, but in the meantime I'm very happy to discourage its use. For the good of the internet or something.

You are complaining about bloat in e-mails and yet you have your picture in your posts. What's up with that?

You choose to look at this website, you don't choose whether or not an html email is downloaded, you don't choose whether or not HTML messages are posted to an USENET server.

In a USENET, you're forced to download all the messages, HTML and plain text. When you download your email, you download the whole lot at once, again, no choice in process.

When you view this site, you choose to go to the website, you choose to view HTML, you make all those choices yourself. If everytime an HTML email was sent to me, I was given an option to delete the file before it is downloaded, you would be right, but that isn't the case.

"You choose to look at this website, you don't choose whether or not an html email is downloaded, you don't choose whether or not HTML messages are posted to an USENET server."

You chose to live where you have a metered internet connection, deal with it.

I prefer HTML mail because I can format it any way that I want. I'm not going to stop because someone is using a 1980s grade internet connection. It's 2007.

I'll tell you why: because it's obnoxious and rude.

I want to read e-mail in the format and style that's most comfortable to me; anything else and you're immediately hindering any chances of me dealing with your message in an efficient fashion.

Businesses don't send people letters by post set in Comic Sans, or in magenta-coloured type, or in 16pt text for exactly the same reasons: you are in no position to judge how the recipient would best prefer to read the messages you're sending them, and so the only sensible option is to be as neutral as possible and allow them to make that decision for you.

Every GUI e-mail client lets you choose how exactly plain-text messages should be rendered: typeface, colour, size, etc. In contrast, very few allow you to override how "rich" messages should be rendered.

If it's that vitally important that rich formatting in something related to the message be preserved, send an attachment. My experience suggests that sending attachments isn't something anybody has any difficulty with, after all (indeed, I regularly receive screenshots which are pasted into Word or PowerPoint documents and then attached, presumably because people don't realise they can usually just paste directly into their e-mail client and it'll create an attachment automatically…)



Yes, the geeks do, but a good proportion of the business world uses an e-mail client whose rendering engine is paralleled with its companion word processor's, rather than any web browser in production (and another portion uses an e-mail client whose rendering engine is like nothing else on the planet, mentioning no IBM Lotus Noteses)


Back on-topic… I don't find the MacBook only having one touchpad button the slightest bit of a problem: two-finger tap on the touchpad itself is (if you switch the option on) a right-click.

"When people tell me HTML email is evil, I always press them to tell me why."

I'll tell you why: because it's obnoxious and rude.

I want to read e-mail in the format and style that's most comfortable to me; anything else and you're immediately hindering any chances of me dealing with your message in an efficient fashion.

I think it's hilarious that your case against HTML formatting uses both italics and bold text. Thanks for proving yourself wrong. Saves a lot of time for the rest of us.