"Click to read Web version of this email"

[J N Winkler]

Why do the people and businesses who send this kind of email never realize that those of us who read email as plain text only do so for a reason?

[agentsteel53]

Why do the people and businesses who send this kind of email never realize that those of us who read email as plain text only do so for a reason?

I am not 100% sure what you mean.  Do you mean something like the AARoads private message notification ("click here to view, and respond to, the PM on the AARoads site")?  Those do get irritating because, really how hard is it to set up a SMF module to accept an incoming email request and forward it along as a private message?

especially when the email shows only the first few words of the total message, and you have to leave the email to read the whole thing.  Luckily AARoads is not like that; I only have to leave my email if I want to respond to the PM. 

[vdeane]

I think he means the companies that use HTML in email to make it look like a web page.

[NJRoadfan]

What he is referring to is when a company sends a flashy HTML e-mail for communication. The first thing people using plain text is "click here to view if you can't see this". 9 times out of 10, the message could have been conveyed in a text based format.

[Mr_Northside]

Yeah... since it's "Off-Topic", I don't necessarily think it's directed at anything here at all.  I agree with the prior 2 posts.

And I also hate that shit too.

[mightyace]

One of the email clients on my Droid does this (K-9 mail client).  I think it is to minimize the amount of data transferred.

[Truvelo]

Most emails I get like that are booking confirmations from airlines and hotels. My email program says something like "To protect your privacy the images have been blocked, click to download them" or similar.

[realjd]

Text only email made sense in the days of dial-up, but why don't you allow HTML email now (if you don't mind my asking)?

[Truvelo]

I assume the last question was directed at me.

I think it's the security level my email client is set to that disables the images until clicked on. There was something a few years ago about viruses being transmitted through HTML emails.

[kurumi]

HTML email makes spam more effective. If the email includes a small graphic with a coded URL (e.g. <img src="spam.biz/tracker.png?asoiuh34892870987adf" width=1 height=1>), then simply displaying the email can notify the spammer that you've seen it, and your address is live. Almost any spammer would want to know this.

[realjd]

I assume the last question was directed at me.

I think it's the security level my email client is set to that disables the images until clicked on. There was something a few years ago about viruses being transmitted through HTML emails.

I was directing it more at J N Winkler. Most mail clients don't automatically display images or run javascript for security purposes, as kurumi pointed out. HTML markup in an email message seems fairly harmless to me though and I was wondering why some people force their mail clients into plain-text mode.

[Scott5114]

I really don't see the point in embedding HTML in email. What formatting am I going to be using? If I'm sending off a letter or memo the only formatting that would be useful is emphasis, and I can EASILY emphasize things by SHOUTING THEM. Or, if I *really* want, I can *stress* my words so that it's plain that I am emphasizing something. If I'm embedding tables and graphics or something I would probably be better off attaching an ODF or a PDF of whatever sort of document I'm trying to deliver so that I know it will be displayed the way it is intended.

[J N Winkler]

I was directing it more at J N Winkler. Most mail clients don't automatically display images or run javascript for security purposes, as kurumi pointed out. HTML markup in an email message seems fairly harmless to me though and I was wondering why some people force their mail clients into plain-text mode.

There are two main reasons.

*  Those of us who read and send email in plain text only tend to be philosophically opposed to rich-format emails.  We want the information right there on the screen, right now, and we don't want our email clients to waste any CPU cycles or graphic memory trying to render HTML.

*  Reading emails in plain text only generally makes phishing emails easier to detect because the HTML reference, as well as the link label, is visible.  I have received several phishing emails which were impossible to detect as such without actually looking at the HTML references.

My experience has been that the companies and organizations which are most likely to send "Click to read Web version of this email," "Use an HTML-capable email client," etc. (all of which appear in the email itself and are not messages displayed by the email client itself) are abusing a prior business transaction (usually something as small and unimportant as purchasing an USB key from the company through its Amazon Marketplace storefront) to set up out-and-out spamming.  The companies and organizations I have dealt with which I consider to be "blue chip," ranging from Amazon itself to RENFE (the Spanish national rail operator), tend to send advertising emails at infrequent intervals and the emails themselves are readable if inelegant in plain text.

And to clarify--no, my complaint was not about AARoads PM notifications.  Not at all.

P.S.  The booking confirmation emails I receive are also readable, if inelegant, in plain text too.

[mightyace]

^^^

I guess I'm the other extreme.

I'm very visually oriented.  i.e. A picture is worth a thousand words.  I can get the information into my brain much faster with a couple of pictures than reading the a few hundred words of text.   And, as bandwidth and CPU cycles are cheap, especially compared to my brain's bandwidth, I'll take the hit.

Plus, I use the HTML formatting to send out emails for a NASCAR fantasy league that I've run as it supports the colors that make Team names easy to distinguish.

But, this is definitely a matter of personal preference.  Or, there is nothing wrong with J N Winkler wanting it all text, if that's what works for him.

One thing most of us can probably agree on is being forced into having it one way or the other.

[Scott5114]

Plus, I use the HTML formatting to send out emails for a NASCAR fantasy league that I've run as it supports the colors that make Team names easy to distinguish.

For something like that I'd probably run a webpage. All the HTML formatting you want, don't have to worry about whether the receiver can display it, just have to give everybody a link once and they can check it whenever they please, and you don't have to send them stuff every time there's a change.

[agentsteel53]

the one thing I hate doing is having to expend extra clicks to read something.  I don't care if something arrives in text or HTML, but I want it all there on the first try.  No "read more..." hassle for me. 

this is especially true when I'm using the browser on the mobile phone, where page requests are a premium.  Sure, I have signal now, but five seconds from now I could be out of data range, so grab everything now while you can!

this of course makes reading blogs a bit iffy, because a lot of blog writers have invested heavily in the writing technique of having a single link and then commentary about it, and of course without visiting the link, one does not get the punch line.

(and don't get me started on how much of a pain it is when the link is to a video!)

[J N Winkler]

the one thing I hate doing is having to expend extra clicks to read something.  I don't care if something arrives in text or HTML, but I want it all there on the first try.  No "read more..." hassle for me.

I am the same way--especially when I am not working at a desk and so am relying on the trackpad rather than a proper mouse as my pointing device.

this is especially true when I'm using the browser on the mobile phone, where page requests are a premium.  Sure, I have signal now, but five seconds from now I could be out of data range, so grab everything now while you can!

People working on dodgy wifi connections have the same problem.  It is actually a pretty common problem when travelling because lots of accommodation providers try to get away with using just a consumer-grade router (which really provides only "lobby wifi") rather than providing boosters as required to assure a consistent signal throughout the property.

In regard to Mightyace's comment above:  yes, we can all agree that compulsion to use a particular access modality is bad.  This is part of the reason I argue that it tends to be the sharp operators who try to force HTML only.

[agentsteel53]

I especially dislike how Wordpress and eBay both detect that I've logged on with a Blackberry, and then seek to provide me as little information per page, forcing me to maximize the quantity of page requests.  

For example, eBay splits up the page into "summary", "description", and "pictures", and I have to click on all of those individually to get what I need to find out... and heaven forbid it's a Buy It Now and I actually want the item - with eBay insisting on telling me "get a real computer and bid from there", it's easier to quickly email five friends and tell them to grab it for me.  (Yes, five, if not ten - one should be near their computer; a Buy It Now that I am interested in usually vanishes within two minutes, so spamming is the only winning strategy.)

Wordpress shows only a two-sentence blurb of the most recent blog post, and then the titles of the next 3 or 4 posts, necessitating 3 or 4 requests (and several "back" requests, which may or may not be cached) when the regular view would give me everything in one page.  (Making it even worse is that Wordpress gives an option for "mobile site" and "full site", but clicking on "full site" on a mobile phone brings you right back to the flimsy mobile site.  What kind of misfeature is that!?)

Gmail's HTML view is also significantly better than its mobile view for similar reasons - too little information, too many clicks.  I wonder why everyone seems to constantly optimize for more requests when they are at a premium.  Or am I the only one who uses a mobile phone in balky environments??

In general, I rather like the "single page view" option for many sites, and wonder who wants to view things one page at a time.  If there isn't a single page view option, clicking "print..." tends to give you a single page with a much better signal-to-noise ratio of actual article vs. corporate logos, banners, "win an ipod or die" epilepsy traps, etc.  (I can't remember which site has the colossal fail of making its print version be multiple pages as well... what the deuce!?  Multiple print jobs!?)

[mightyace]

^^^

I've had a similar complaint with a number of sites.  They detect my Droid and automatically push me to their mobile site.  Now, the better ones, give me an option to go to their normal site instead.

On a device like the Droid, with a 854x480 display, I don't need a dumbed down mobile version.  (That is better than the base 640x480 VGA resolution.)

The two worst sites are ESPN and NASCAR which don't give you the option to go to their normal sites and their mobile sites are basically worthless. IMHO

I'm guessing that there is some setting on my phone or it browsers that I can set that might let me work around these things, but I'm not familiar with it.

For something like that I'd probably run a webpage. All the HTML formatting you want, don't have to worry about whether the receiver can display it, just have to give everybody a link once and they can check it whenever they please, and you don't have to send them stuff every time there's a change.

I may in the future.  However, I've been too lazy to set one up.  Cutting and pasting from my Excel spreadsheet is easier than setting up and running a website.  And, I never had a complaint from any of the participants.  (Of course, J N Winkler's not in the league.  LOL)

[agentsteel53]

ESPN doesn't default to a mobile site on the Blackberry, I don't think, and their full site isn't too, too bad - the only problem is one that a lot of other sites share as well, where one has to scroll past pages and pages of sidebars and headers that display above the main article. 

You never notice just how long a page's sidebar is until you view it in mobile form.  I remember purposely counting some blog's sidebar and it was 142 pages.

[mightyace]

^^^

ESPN, at least, has release an Android application which at least works for getting scores and results.  This partially mitigates the problem.

[Scott5114]

Oh, God, "read more" is a pain in the ass. Seriously, the web is not a book, there is no need for random-ass page breaks! I guess people just got used to the idea of slow connections back in the 56k day and the collective consciousness of the design world never caught up to the speed of broadband, or something.

[agentsteel53]

Oh, God, "read more" is a pain in the ass. Seriously, the web is not a book, there is no need for random-ass page breaks! I guess people just got used to the idea of slow connections back in the 56k day and the collective consciousness of the design world never caught up to the speed of broadband, or something.

I do have a single "read more" break on most of my entries on the AARoads blog, simply because my posts are so image-heavy.  Since each individual entry might be as many as 15-20 pages long on a browser window of typical size, this helps people who are just browsing to find entries that they might find interesting, with the preview photos all loading in reasonable time, and without a single long entry overwhelming them.

the individual posts, though, no matter where they are linked from (the blog front page, or various links scattered about the web) always open up in full.  I figure if people want to read the whole thing, they want to read the whole thing.

[Alps]

Oh, God, "read more" is a pain in the ass. Seriously, the web is not a book, there is no need for random-ass page breaks! I guess people just got used to the idea of slow connections back in the 56k day and the collective consciousness of the design world never caught up to the speed of broadband, or something.

I received feedback early in my website that my longer pages (particularly the NJ Turnpike/I-95) were just getting too long and unwieldy.  I use page breaks as a way to group things, both to make it easier to find material and to give people a break so my page doesn't turn into a sea of images and text in which to drown.  Also, I don't need 300 images loading and eating up bandwidth every time someone wants to see a particular one or two.

[agentsteel53]

I received feedback early in my website that my longer pages (particularly the NJ Turnpike/I-95) were just getting too long and unwieldy.  I use page breaks as a way to group things, both to make it easier to find material and to give people a break so my page doesn't turn into a sea of images and text in which to drown.  Also, I don't need 300 images loading and eating up bandwidth every time someone wants to see a particular one or two.

well, your site isn't linear.  People may or may not want to go from exit 6 of the Turnpike to exit 7 to exit 8...

For an article, it makes sense to assume that after reading the first sixth, the user wants to go straight to the second sixth, and then the third - so why are we putting it across six pages again?  Oh right, to pepper the user with more advertisements... I'm beginning to see how this works!  Six times the seizures, six times the fun.