On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 01:32:10PM +0000, Natalie S. Ford wrote: > On Wed, Dec 04, 2002 at 12:20:28AM +0000, Alex McLintock wrote: > > I can handle the sort of email where it says "Someone has sent you an > > electronic card, you can view it at this URL....." > > but what if I want to include the whole graphic in html email. Is there a > > standard CPAN module for that? (I can send attachments - but am not sure I > > understand how images are used in html email). > > HTML mail is bad and wrong, from what I remember of email standards. I know > some MUA's can read and send HTML mail, but many cannot (mine for example)
It's a perfectly valid standard, and in practice virtually every mail client can read it now. Yours can too in fact with a little fiddling. The issue of who *wants* to read HTML is a different matter, of course :-) Here's some real world info on this collected by ClickZ - eye-opening article, http://www.clickz.com/em_mkt/infra/article.php/1428551 The "some people can't read it" argument is dead now. Besides, with multipart/alternative you can provide a text version as well. Whatever you do, I think the newsletter should be opt-in & offer a choice, HTML, plain text or both. I don't really buy the dial-up argument. It's possibly to make decent images with a low foot print and good HTML isn't substantially bigger than text anyway, with stylesheets. Anyone on dial-up is unlikely to be sitting there staring at te download bar, they'll be doing soething else so download time isn't a big waste of their day. To pre-empt the "well people use crappy bloaty HTML editors" - that's a specious argument; people can write crappy copy, not line-wrap it properly, etc, etc as well. Text only is great for conversations. HTML mail serves a purpose for its particular applications: produce pleasant looking output with colors and images, which aids comprehension and can highlight more important data quickly. I don't need to point this out, psychologists have known this for years. It's how humans work. Just because email started out as text doesn't mean it has to stay shackled to that medium for eternity. Choices are good. Paul, stirring again :) -- Paul Makepeace ....................................... http://paulm.com/ "If the bed bugs bite, then why does one fall down, but throw-up." -- http://paulm.com/toys/surrealism/
