Clear standards would also lead to a concentration of the market. At the moment people use many different e-mail programmes. In case of a standard there would be only a few programmes that would survive. Microsoft may be interested in that, but all the others?

Here a poll of users of Finanz Nachrichten which e-mail software or which webmail they are using. You can clearly see how fragmentet this market is at the moment:

AOL 8 0,1 %
AOL 9 2,0 %
other AOL version 0,2 %
Apple Mail 3,4 %
Evolution 0,5 %
KMail 0,6 %
Lotus Notes 6 2,1 %
Lotus Notes 7 1,1 %
Lotus Notes 8 0,7 %
other Lotus Notes version 0,2 %
Mozilla Thunderbird 11,7 %
Netscape 0,5 %
Opera Mail 0,8 %
Outlook 2000 3,1 %
Outlook 2003 12,9 %
Outlook 2007 7,2 %
Outlook Express 10,7 %
T-Online-Software 5,0 %
other Software 1,7 %

1&1 Webmail 0,9 %
AOL Webmail 0,2 %
AON Webmail 0,1 %
Arcor Webmail/PIA 1,0 %
Bluewin Webmail 0,4 %
Chello Webmail 0,1 %
Daybyday 0,2 %
ePost 0,2 %
Freenet-Mail 1,8 %
Gmail 2,5 %
GMX Webmail 7,4 %
Hotmail 2,2 %
Lycos/Jubii 1,0 %
T-Online-Webmail 2,7 %
Web.de Webmail 8,3 %
Windows Live 0,6 %
Yahoo!Mail 3,4 %
other Webmail provider 2,5 %

2104 votes
http://www.finanznachrichten.de/service/umfragearchiv.asp?id=555

I olso do that. If i get a email in plain text i delete it. Because most times it is spam.

“proffessional email marketing html is absulutly necessarr”

This is a good idee. You see more of this company’s

Dos any one knows good proffessional email marketing company’s?

As a web architect, I am evolved with the development of both websites and html emails. One of the biggest challenges for a company is how to deliver its brand over email formats. The simple answer is that the email clients lack of standards compliancy leads most business to attach documents intended to be mere email communication instead of employing a web designer to alter and edit their HTML emails. The only real time that this is cost effective is when the email is intended to be for marketing or as everyone seems to be calling SPAM, little to most of the people posting on this site recognise that most of the emails that you receive are solicited by the receiver in one way or another. True SPAM is never normally HTML format due to the expense of production.

Anyway, why should email clients be the only place left on the planet that requires tables for construction? Surely the development of email clients towards the CSS2.1 standards is a step in the right direction. I receive regular emails (Which I have requested) from companies such as SitePoint which to me are perfect examples of why you should use HTML emails. The information is combined with pictures to allow me to quickly scan the content for the information that is of interest to me.

Imagine the media that would start to be developed especially in the areas of new and magazine content. I feel that email clients in general is an area that is ripe for the picking and if Hotmail or Gmail were to develop an email client to go along with their web based mail projects which were CSS2.1 compliant, well the world would be a better and richer environment.

I would relish the chance to contribute to any HTML email workgroup and I believe that there are millions of other web designers and web architects that feel the same.

Name-calling or psycho-ad hominem qualifications are unneeded, sterile, uncalled in this website/topic discussed here.

“I appreciate Matt Robin putting in his two cents, but I think his points are off topic. This isn’t the “ban HTML in email” project. It is the “Email HTML standards” project, and that should not include a discussion on banning HTML in E-mail.”

Accessibility is not off topic here. Reducing load and requirements imposed on the user system resources is not irrelevant topic. Improving safety of email activities as recommended by basic security measures is not off topic either. Emails in HTML format is not without measurable inconvenients and assessable problems. Businesses making money out of it nowadays is a very weak argument: it’s an argument based on conjoncture, not on solid ground.

If “HTML email was a bad idea. Nobody disagrees with that.” is true, then deal with this and proceed from it, otherwise assume your contradictions, incoherences and inconsequences. And be prepared and accept in advance that you will be reminded once in a while that HTML email is a bad idea, prejudiciable, implies an accessibility burden, etc.

Gérard

If sending HTML formatted E-mail is possible, then it will happen simply because it provide a more useful feature suitable for message sending… and that is design.

People design paper-based letters today, and there is a reason for it. Businesses place their logos at the top and format the layout, select the font, color, border, and even the paper. So it makes perfect sense that people would want to have some control over the style presentation of electronic messages. I think of it as E-mail evolving and I welcome it.

Matt, not everyone has your preferences. I personally enjoy getting well-formatted e-mails from newsletters of which I have subscribed. it provides a better reading experience than plain text.

The main problem thus far has not been HTML in E-mail, but the lack of standards specifically for presentation of E-mail. There really should be a separate specification for writing HTML for E-mail. Instead, people crammed in some loose support for HTML into some E-mail clients and that resulted in a psuedo-standard. Too often, E-mails formatted in HTML show up broken and sometimes unreadable.

Allow E-mail to evolve, please. Don’t hold back the rest of us just because of your preferences of minimalism.

Brian

Frank: Don’t be stupid – I’ve already clearly stated that I support web standards, that’s a separate topic and you haven’t read what I wrote. Go back and read it again!