FW: [Sigia-l] OT: ID of emails

[Karl Groves]

<snipped discussion of embedding v. attaching images>

My short-term memory is horrible, so forgive me if any of this is irrelevant or repetitious.

Here's my take:

1) The *only* reliable format that users can view in their mail client is plain text. That's just the way it goes.
2) If this is a solicited e-mail, aka newsletter, hopefully the recipient was provided the means to tell you their preference as to whether they want to receive HTML email or plain text. Send them only what they've asked for.
3) During the creation of the e-mail, make sure that you place a comment in the HTML, *at the top* of the HTML markup that says something to the effect of "<!-- If you see this, your mail client does not support HTML email or you've adjusted your preferences to disallow HTML in emails. For your convenience, we've archived this newsletter at http://www.domain.com/newsletter/blahblah -->"
4) These days, the chances are about the same that a company's spam filters are just as likely to interrupt the delivery of an HTML email as they are an attached image, so most of that discussion is moot. Spam filters are just as aggressive in snatching e-mails for keyword violations, too.
5) As far as the issue of client support - the vast majority of recipients will have Outlook, Outlook Express, or AOL anyway, so people mentioning that they have Thunderbird is irrelevant, unless for some reason your target recipients are very tech savvy (and intelligent enough to know what a POS Outlook is).

-Karl