Re: FN-FORUM: RE: MIME email type

date posted 13th March 2006 12:51

Alain Williams wrote:

> Thus they should *always* send out a plain text attachment as well as
> an html version -- even better allow a customer the choice when they
> sign up for whatever.

I disagree with this. If I was happy to read HTML versions of email,
then I'd still only be able to read it when I was using a graphical
email program. There would still be times when I had access to my mail
server, but not a graphical email program. Perhaps I'm on an ssh
connection to my server or maybe I'm using a simplified web browser on a
phone. In those cases I'd want to read the text-only version of the
mail. But if I've signed up to the HTML version, then I won't have the
text-only version.

The choice on whether to display the HTML or text version needs to be
made depending on the capabilities of the current email program. And
therefore you can't make that decision when you sign up to a mailing list.

I know this wastes bandwidth, but I think that the benefits outweigh that.

Dave...

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