HMTL:

The use of Hyper Text formatting in Email

HTML stands for 'Hyper Text Markup Language', is the dominant markup language used on the World Wide Web. It's use in email is to provide a more structured and readable document and to enable content available on a web page to be published in an email.

The adoption of HMTL in email has not been a stable process, with many users and experts expressing a dislike of the conception and for email to be only transmitted in ASCII text format. Even in the webmail services and clients which support HMTL, they still offer the option to send mail in text format only. As time has moved on the dissenting voices has become less apparent and there are few businesses which use text only email clients.

Capability of HTML email messages has been an issue. Not all clients comply to W3C specifications, and therefore due to the complexity of HTML, not all HTML email messages are rendered correctly by their clients. Many newsletters are created in HTML, especially those of a commercial nature, and the perceived lack of professionalism if their newsletter is not rendered correctly has led to much dissatisfaction. The Email Standards Project has been created to find a solution to rendering issues.

The criticism's of HTML email messages are threefold,

• They are larger than text email messages and take longer to download and eat up more bandwidth.
• If they use distracting images they can become more unreadable and less structured than text only email.
• Security vulnerabilities, with hyper links HTML email messages can link to content which purports to be an authoritative source (bank). These scams have led to a general distrust of email.