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:

1. Mail clients who simply can't render it, even via an external viewer somehow integrated into the client
2. 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:

• Exchange can downconvert HTML emails outbound to the internet if you never want any HTML email to go outside of your organization. This can also be configured on a per-domain basis, so you might allow HTML out by default, but specify plain text to a few select domains. More information: Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003. This capability also existed in 5.5 (although if you're still on 5.5, have you thought about upgrading? :-)
• For those with a moral objection against HTML: configure Outlook 2002/3 to render all email in plain text. You can also use this sample from slipstick to do this in Outlook 2000.
• To help avoid spam webbugs: Don't render inline HREF pictures automatically (this works in OWA 2003 as well)
• To help avoid spam, including plain text spam: Use the Outlook 2003 junk mail filter.
• To help avoid spam on the server: Wait for the Exchange 2003 spam filter, plus use the existing anti-spam features.
• Keep informed on the HTML mail vulnerabilities/patches in Outlook/IE.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  Great post KC. This is one of those "religious" issues like emacs vs. vi, PageMaker vs. Quark XPress, or even WIndows vs. Mac. In my personal case, the company I work for has a pathological hatred of HTML mail and so Outlook is set to defualt to plain text (unless I'm replying to an HTML message) for my work accounts.
  
  My personal accounts use HTML though. I don't embed big images or do other noxious things to make my messages problematic but the ability to use font styling and color is often helpful and I much prefer the way HTML mail handles quoting.
• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  Agreed... I like HTML, my eyes have problems following any thread longer than one or two if it's in plain text.
  
  On a side note, your comment makes me wonder, if you asked 10 techies to list the religious wars they're aware of, which ones would they choose? Pagemaker vs quark xpress would never have occurred to me! I would have said pine vs elm or any terminal based unix client vs mutt next. Just goes to show my background =)
  
  A quote from some friends of mine in 98:
  
  "One editor to rule them all. One editor to find them. One editor to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Oh wait. That was the One Ring. oops."
  
  "Are there any PICO users in this room? There's one! Against the Wall! He looks like he uses vi! Against the Wall!"
  
• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  for the interested folks....
  
  the real problems with HTML email are as follows:
  
  1) scripts in the email (JavaScript and such)
  2) image links in the email that may tell the server you have read the email.
  3) image links that look like SRC="http://www.domain.com/CGI-BIN/image.pl=dgfd36546"
  that windup logging your action and may also be a way for spyware and such.
  
  
  I'd like to see an open standard for a ML based on html but it would ban the above items, no external links to any image, program, style sheet, script file etc...
  no client side script tags.
  no "Malformed" HTML tags as used in spam to hide the message from filters!!
  
  if we could have a standard like that, it could help make HTML format safe for users and less of a problem for the folks who currently don't want it.
  infact I bet 90% of the "No HTML email" policy's would go away given the rules I just sugjested.
• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  To address denny and Marc: Outlook also has settings to control #1 that are not new in outlook 2003, although the features for #2 and #3 are new in ol2k3. I'm not saying there have never been bugs where these settings don't work as they should, but they do exist for the purpose of controlling what kind of script, controls, etc can be run. Tools | Options | Security | Zone Settings.
  
  Phil - that's wicked, yikes. Personally, I find backgrounds useless and unprofessional, but I do see a lot of value in basic html formatting as well as things like tables. Agreed on the powerpoint comparison - they are both tools and they can both be misused. Similarly, I've seen people use word to create what are, in effect, massive spreadsheets. I am reminded of one of my favorite of Rory's posts, "If they wanted a database, why didn't they just use Word?": http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/434.aspx.
• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  I am on a couple of lists that, while there's no problem sending or viewing HTML messages, HTML messages cause a huge problem to those that subscribe to the digest version. I can't imagine reading through dozens of messages in a single plain-text file, so I choose the "individual" method, and have no problem setting my address book to always send to the particular lists using "plain text."
  
  It's my personal experience that anti-Microsoft can often be equated with ant-HTML email; many of my SGML and XML geek friends "prefer" plain text, also preferring Unix/Linux to Windows, Corel Office to MS Office, etc.
  
  And since I'm posting, let me just say that I <strong>love</strong> Outlook 2003 (and everything else included in Office 2003).
• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
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• Anonymous
  January 04, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  March 02, 2004
  Part One - why plain text email is better
  
  Clarity, security, accessibility, privacy, mailing lists.
  
  references:
  
  1. http://www.birdhouse.org/etc/evilmail.html
  2. http://www.georgedillon.com/web/html_email_is_evil.shtml
  3. Google "html email bad"
  4. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,41639,00.html
  
  
  
  Part Two - statistics
  
  Somewhere between 10 and 40% depending on who you believe.
  
  http://www.emaillabs.com/resources_statistics.html
  
  Google "html email statistics" or somesuch