Once upon a time there was just one way to compose email messages: using the good old plain-text, 128 standard ASCII characters that anybody could read without any problem on any computer and operating system.
But then a new email client got into our computers: Microsoft
Outlook Express. Outlook broke the estabilished
standards; by default it sends emails in HTML format.
A message written in HTML is better looking, because you can use
different fonts and different styles, many colors and images, too!
On the other side, an HTML message is a lot bigger
in size: in Internet jargon you can say that an HTML message is heavier.
This is not the worst problem. Not all
the email clients can display HTML messages in a proper way. This isn't
a defect! Don't forget that HTML is NOT
a standard in email messages! Very often not displaying an HTML message
is an aware choice, as this format is potentially more dangerous for
the security of a computer system.
You should be aware that not all Windows users use Outlook as their email client, and not all the Internet users use Windows; somebody doesn't use a graphic screen and reads email through a text-only screen!
For example I sometimes log in my main desktop computer via the laptop using "ssh": this gives me access to a character terminal on my main system. This way I can preview the messages I received, but in a terminal HTML emails appear like raw code, a mess to read.
The moral of the story is: don't write messages in HTML format, use plain text instead. When you write an email, fonts and colors don't matter: the only thing that matters is the message; plain text is perfectly suitable to deliver your message to anyone.
This doesn't mean you don't have to use Outlook Express if you like it! Outlook Express can send plain text message too, if you want it to do so. Just spend 5 minutes of your time to browse through the menu or the help system to find the option you have to change. It's easy if you try!
Thank you!
Marcello Mac
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