Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 14:52:25 -0700
Reply-To: Ron 'Coyote' Lussier <coyote@MACROMEDIA.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Ron 'Coyote' Lussier <coyote@MACROMEDIA.COM>
Subject: Re: MIME Message! (non-vw related)
In-Reply-To: <4.3.1.2.20000523161459.03ee54d0@127.0.0.1>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> I have to differ here -- I myself prefer to use occasional italic or
> boldface for emphasis as well, along with underline, color and font
> changes, and all the rest. The trouble is, it's *expensive.*
> Take a look
> below at the source code for Brent's message -- is it fair to
> estimate that
> half the code or less is text? And he didn't even use a single
> byte of the
> formatting code, except to specify a font size in the beginning.
> If he had
> hand-coded the message the overhead would have been much smaller, but it
> would have taken longer to do, not to mention requiring him to learn HTML
> coding. The question here is bang for the buck. Is it *worth* asking
> gerry to send an additional three megabytes or so of data to the list so
> that this message can appear in a font size that scales itself in an
> unpredictable way to the particular display characteristics of whoever is
> reading it? I'm not picking on Brent, his msg was just easy to hand and
> represents the latest thinkin from uSoft.
The problem is that Microsoft writes extremely inefficient HTML. That's why
Macromedia Dreamweaver has a menu item called "Clean up Word HTML..."
> >The argument against HTML formatting on the basis of the number of
> >characters in the letter is a specious one. The difference for text
> >messages is not noticeable.
>
> In my experience the additional overhead varies from about 30% to over
> 100%, sometimes much more for very short messages. To me that's
> noticeable. 100% overhead is just like my Vanagon taking a dive to 9
> miles-per-gallon! Take a look below:
Right. Again, this is extrememly inefficient HTML. The overhead on a real
letter is perhaps 10% at most.
> > (Embedded graphics are another matter
> >entirely.) Likewise, the use of HTML as a formatting tool does
> not in any
> >way translate to either tracking or ads.
>
> I'm not so sure. People are already using a trick with a 1-pixel graphic
> that makes it very easy to visit a website without knowing it. I forget
> the details and haven't time to look them up now. But I can easily see a
> new latest-and-greatest mailer that would execute html code to go out and
> fetch stuff off the web when a message is opened, and I think that might
> give some very interesting possibilities to our market-tracking friends.
Yes, it's possible to do this. But does Microsoft Outlook do this? No.
Nor do most people sending HTML email. The tracking issue is orthagonal to
the discussion of whether HTML email is appropriate.
Coyote
-- /\_/\ ____
Ron 'Coyote' Lussier ( ) \ _/__
coyote@macromedia.com \ / \X / 1991 Syncro Westy 'Francis'
1.650.481.4847 \_/ \/ San Francisco, CA
