November 10, 2003HTML still vastly underutilizedMy friend and colleague Rod wonders if anybody uses tinyurl. I blogged about tinyurl some time ago and my immediate reaction to Rod's question was "I use it all the time". Then I thought a little bit more and it occurred to me that I used to use it all the time, but I have dramatically reduced the amount of tinyurl's I send in my emails. Why? Simply because I use "real links" in emails now. I don't know about you, but while 99% of the emails I receive are in HTML, very few use even the most basic features of HTML (bold, italics, color) and much less HREF's. When someone wants me to take a look at a certain link, the email typically looks like this: From: Friend of Cedric A few months ago, I noticed this and wondered how come nobody bothers to use real links in their emails? After all, it's not like senders are not familiar with HTML and they certainly know how to insert an href in a text, regardless of the tool they use. So why don't we see more emails such as: From: Friend of Cedric It is trivial to insert a link with Mozilla (Ctrl-L) and Outlook (Ctrl-K, same as FrontPage), so why don't people use this feature more? Once you start using links in your emails, the need for tinyurl is greatly reduced. I still use tinyurl for my Yahoo Messenger status, though. How about yourself? Do you use real links in your emails? When you compose an email, do you bother adding some formatting such as color or bulleted lists to make your message easier to read? How about email you receive? Posted by cedric at November 10, 2003 07:29 AM Comments
Hi Ced - I know that most people have HTML enabled mail clients... but does everyone? If you use: "Foo: http://www.foo.com" then text mail clients get more context. I don't know if this matters much anymore though. It does bug me when people do the opposite of what you are saying, and they OVERUSE HTML in their email. Damn stationary! :) Dion Posted by: Dion at November 10, 2003 08:01 AMI still avoid using HTML in my mail if possible, although it is tempting. HTML mail when overused, as Dion pointed out, can be so extremely frustrating. Posted by: Anthony Eden at November 10, 2003 08:50 AMQuite a few mail clients and more and more anti-spam/anti-virus mail gateways filter out all HTML from messages, including links. This is the main historical and still valid reason for making URLs appear clearly in the text. Posted by: François PLANQUE at November 10, 2003 12:01 PMI would argue that if they remove the links during the clearing process, then they are broken and you should use a different client... I mean, how hard is it to transform Check it out Into Check it out (link: http://foo.com). Note that this is how Slashdot cleans up its posts. Posted by: Cedric at November 10, 2003 12:11 PMOops, MT ate the HTML :-) I know... but the recepient often doesn't have control on his company's software packages and firewalls and you just want to get your message through... so you rant at broken software a couple of times and eventually you end up just adapting silently... :/ Posted by: François PLANQUE at November 10, 2003 12:28 PMCedric, We are resigned to using a corporate Notes R4.x We might join the html revolution some day... i think the reason has more to do with simplicity then anything else. it's just easier to copy a link directly in as text then it is to use a gesture, no matter how few steps it is the other thing is that there are many, many places where it's interesting to copy a link in, email, IM, little text boxes like the one i'm in right now, other html-forms, IM status, wikis, it goes on and on some of these have no means of forming links, they just assume that a smart parser will "linkify" the URL. those that do have a real link-creation-gesture are all different from one another (albeit still simple) so in the end, people pick the path of least resistance as long as it gets the job done "mostly" Posted by: Rod Chavez at November 13, 2003 04:54 PMPost a comment
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