Strong Opinions on HTML E-Mail

As I investigated HTML e-mail again, I discovered a good bit of anger out there by a minority but vocal group. Here are some of their comments.  

Bad Idea Then and Now

"When it comes to HTML e-mail, I stand in direct conflict with you. It was a bad idea three years ago, and it's still a bad idea." -- M. Baska

Don't Let Bill Gates Make Choices for Me

"While I'm responding to your typeface survey, and despite my agreeing to receive your mail in HTML, let me add that you fall way short of the issue in your advice on how to tell if a recipient's mail program can handle HTML! Mine can, but I overwhelmingly prefer ASCII. For exactly the reason your survey addresses (more readable, not more beautiful!), HTML is often LESS readable. Add that to the security issues, and I'm a solid ASCII fan.

"I should be able to receive mail the way I want to, NOT the way Bill Gates wants me to. If Outlook Express, with the same efficiency and relatively buglessness of the version I'm using now, would allow me to reject mail if it contains <IMG> tags and other annoyances and other security/privacy violators, I'd consider changing. So far, nobody at MS seems to care, or if they do, they'll probably make this capability (if it exists) available only as part of an unnecessary, inefficient, bug-ridden overall system upgrade. I suppose I could switch to another mail program, but this one otherwise does just about everything I want (would be nice if it would let me see mail on the server without downloading it, but...)." -- Randall

E-mail Sniffing via Blank Gif

"You suggestion of finding out which email client the punter uses via the header is good but not fool proof. They still might not be using the HTML but plain text for speed, e.g. Outlook. A good approach is to send a confirmation to a subscriber that has a single embedded html tag at the end of the mail that retrieves a blank gif. If the call is made to the server then they are HTML, else they are plain text. If they are not HTML then the impact on look and feel of the message is minimal because any error message or tag details would be at the end of the message." -- Adrian

Lack Full Font Control

"While you can influence the typeface that an HTML e-mail client displays, you can't really control it. The typeface depends on the typefaces installed on the Mac or PC that is viewing it. Trying to control the typeface beyond the basic styles is an exercise that won't yield significant differences except for the few who have those styles installed. Unless of course you also download the font with the e-mail which is a whole other bag of worms. Just thought you should know." --Richard Goepel