Colored Backgrounds

[Anders Gjerløv]

>>There are, however, 
>>many others who have a drive for quality in every thing they do. They ask, how
>>can my e-mail message be made better. In many cases html is a good choice.
>Since I'm the one who started all this..... THAT, I agree with! As tests showed the
>increased size isn't that great. Today disk space is cheap. Also the Internet
>backbone per a recent WSJ article is expanding in capacity much faster than
>even the rapid growth of traffic !
Too bad we don't _feel_ that, because of all the wasted bandwith on
crap (not only HTML e-mail etc.)

And the size should at least double. If it doesnt, then PMMail must be
doing something it shouldn't. As I understand it, there must be a
plaintext version of any sent e-mail (and therefore the text of the
mail will be present twice), to be sure that even a PDA (or other
simple mail client) will be able to interpret it. Am I mistaken - I
think it's defined in a RFC somewhere, but could be mistaken.

>Also different color texts can be helpful in separating parts of messages, or having
>original text your referring to in a different color than the response text so its easier to
>tell them apart etc.
Good for you. Now send an e-mail where you have made a lot of this to
one of the "few" (*cough*) Lotus Notes users around the world. Since
you are absolutly sure as to what is seperated, and how, you make a lot
of assumptions that your mail is clearly understood. As a result you
forget to write the text clearly, and since the Notes user DOES NOT see
your formatting (the ones I write to will not anyway), he/she totally
misinterprets your mail!!!! I've _seen_ this - heck I've even
experienced this many times. Communication is a very difficult issue.
Written communication is 10 times more difficult than talking to
someone face to face. If you write an e-mail and use colours,
formatting etc., you should be 100% sure that *all* the recipients can
read it as you intended it to look. If not, you should go back to plain
text, and look at it - because chances are that's what the person will
read it in. And remember - sometimes people use simple tools to look at
e-mail while not in the office. Mobile phones, PDA's, Telnet etc. comes
to mind. All formatting is lost on these devices (if the mail is
readable at all!), and therefore you'll risk that your work will be
misinterpreted!

>Plus I don't like to be like everyone else. If I can be creative and look a bit different I like the ability to do that!
Hmm - so do I. That's why I every day try to write things that people
will actually understand the first time they read it. And trust me -
it's more difficult than I imagined a few years ago, but very much
worth the effort.

>Dave in Phoenix, who asked the html question about colored backgrounds that started this!
And it's been a good discussion IMHO. I will still say that plain text
e-mails are the best choice (read: likely to get you into the least
trouble)

Regards,
Anders

Toggle the fug!