don't like HTML email? here's your fix.

Fri, 31 Mar 2000 17:40:27 +0100 (BST)

>The latest Outlook Express, installed on my system at IE 5.01 upgrade
>time, generates
><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
>"rich" text. It includes <DIV> elements, being able to use style
>information to blocks of content.
>This is *not* a /very/ limited subset of HTML ...

Just because, Outlook says it's using "HTML 4.0 Transitional", 
doesn't mean it will use the entire feature set implied by 
the statement.  

Hopefully it doesn't. 

It will probably use IE's rendering engine so will probably 
understand most/all HTML4T it receives, but will presumably 
only generate a limited subset itself when you write a message).

HTML 4.0 Transitional means that the HTML may contain "random"
features from earlier revisions! (not really random of course,
the transitional feature set is defined to be HTML 4 + most 
if not all of HTML 3). So as a contribution to setting
standards this is almost useless, because it effectively means
"any old junk HTML may appear in this page").

HTML 4 transitional includes all the font, java script, and image 
map tags etc etc that either don't make sense in a mailer, or are
depricated by w3c (all the stuff the standards body say you 
shouldn't use)

One example from w3c's guidelines at http://ww.w3.org/MarkUp/

"FONT tag considered harmful! Many filters from word-processing 
packages, and also some HTML authoring tools, generate HTML code 
which is completely contrary to the design goals of the language. 

What they do is to look at a document almost purely from the point 
of view of layout" 

HTML is so portable and maintains layout so well, that
some dickheads put this (GENUINE) message on their webpages:

"Before you view this page please do the following:

1. Set your screen size to 800x600, that's what I used to
   design this page, and it looks much better. Any bigger 
   than that is fine too, but you won't be able to view it 
   at 640x480.
2. View this page in Internet Explorer. I checked it in Netscape,
   and it does some wierd stuff. Better to play it safe.

If you do not do this, you will not be able to properly view this
page. Please let all the images load FULLY."
[Found at http://www.geocities.com/soul_impressions/]

I look forward to switching operating systems and adjusting my 
display resolution to read emails in future :^)

BTW: In case no-one's mentioned it before, HTML is unsuitable for 
markup in emails and no standards govern its use in this manner, 
that's why some of us argue strongly against it's use!

Simon