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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

HTML as a mail format is a horrifying mess. What you want is a rich text format for displaying static text and maybe some images and links and stuff. What we got is the entirety of the modern web application development environment stuffed into our mail clients, with maybe 1/100th the attention to standards compliance and bug fixing that real browsers get, and a metric ton of "Oh Wait Not That" workarounds to plug the obvious security gaps inherent in the "run web apps from any attacker who has your email address" metaphor.

This is one of the big reasons why email has pretty much died for casual use. Even in work environments almost everyone uses chat clients these days.

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> This is one of the big reasons why email has pretty much died for casual use. Even in work environments almost everyone uses chat clients these days.

I don't see how this follows. Yes, HTML email fucking sucks. But most people are using Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, etc, all of which do a pretty good job at handling HTML emails - especially between each other. How do you go from "html emails are bad" to "html emails led to IM replacing email"?

In the 1990s it was common to exchange short, 1-line, emails - or even emails where the entire message fits in the subject line.

…you can still do that on internal email systems; but over the internet any kind of unsolicited short email will probably be dropped by Bayesian filters on the recipient’s side because the information-capacity of a short email is… well, short, making it harder to discern from short spam/attack emails.

Also, email clients are getting heavier and slower: (Classic) Outlook M365/2025/Etc somehow takes a grating 10+ seconds to fully load and warm-up on my brand new machine, while double-clicking an email to open it makes the whole thing awkwardly hang for 2-3 seconds, even when working offline. It’s given me a huge aversion to using email in general, so I’m not going to send a 1-liner via Outlook.

> (Classic) Outlook M365/2025/Etc

Why would you subject yourself to that torture? Thunderbird is like LibreOffice is to MS Office, meaning you will have to adapt, but it is still lean for being a contemporary email client.

> Why would you subject yourself to that torture?

MS can take my VBA macros from my cold, dead, fingers: the JS-based replacement in New Outlook is incredibly neutered, such as local filesystem access or managing message attachments.

In my personal experience, while the experience you're describing is frustrating, it didn't feel connected. I don't see a connection to prevalence of HTML being a driving factor. Even when I was using pine I'd use irc or aim if available.

For me, it was simply the lack of adoption of messaging options that made email the default tool. Once cell phones came along and people got accustomed to instant quick messaging that was generally ubiquitous, email was out, whether you were using pine, outlook, or something in between.

> …you can still do that on internal email systems; but over the internet any kind of unsolicited short email will probably be dropped by Bayesian filters on the recipient’s side because the information-capacity of a short email is… well, short, making it harder to discern from short spam/attack emails.

I do this all the time. I don't think I've ever had a dropped email, because I always get a response.

> Also, email clients are getting heavier and slower: (Classic) Outlook M365/2025/Etc somehow takes a grating 10+ seconds to fully load and warm-up on my brand new machine, while double-clicking an email to open it makes the whole thing awkwardly hang for 2-3 seconds, even when working offline. It’s given me a huge aversion to using email in general, so I’m not going to send a 1-liner via Outlook.

Does your average human really care though?

Also, mobile email clients (Gmail, Apple Mail) load roughly as fast (or faster) than popular IM apps (Whatsapp, Slack, Discord). Discord in particular is a huge resource hog, with very noticeable load times, and semi-advertisement popups that you have to click through. I have not seen any evidence that this diminishes Discord's popularity.

> Even in work environments almost everyone uses chat clients these days.

I'm not sure how this is better though. With chat clients you are completely locked into their ecosystem. Email at least is an open protocol and interoperable.

There are also some email programs that do not support HTML. I use a email program that does not support HTML.

I do the same.

Not only does my mail usage not generate any outbound network traffic, nor follow any links, but I can also inspect and edit URLs without following them.

This has been true since the beginning of HTML email. It hasn't stopped it from proliferating. It hasn't stopped it from being de-facto mandatory, and has no chance of reversing the course now.

HTML is going to be inseparable part of e-mail for as long as e-mail lives, and yeah, it seems more likely than e-mail will die as a whole rather than get any simpler technically.

At this point we can only get better at filtering the HTML.

I'm pretty sure that the real reason is spam. Nobody is composing e-mail with complex designs to send their colleagues.

I feel like the major problem with almost everything that has a feed these days is the feed. Real state is a finite resource victim of the tragedy of commons: to be visible, you must post, but if others post, you are less visible, so to be even more visible, you post more, which prompts others to post even more, and anyone who doesn't play this game loses.

This happens with all feeds: chronological feeds on Tumblr, e-mail, RSS, etc.

One project I've seen that has tried a novel approach to this was https://fraidyc.at/ Essentially instead of putting all posts in a line, it's an RSS client that just tells you who has posted recently but not what they have posted.

> I'm pretty sure that the real reason is spam. Nobody is composing e-mail with complex designs to send their colleagues.

There is a use case of using HTML for transactional emails:

- enhance company branding with design - embed call to action items via hrefs

Between my network ad blocker and VPN, I’m lucky for an email that is anything beyond formatted text to render properly anymore.

I’ve practically given up on clicking any sort of links from marketing emails as they are full of multiple redirect trackers. Which, is a shame, as these are obviously from companies I care to keep up with and support.

Email will always have its place, but I agree the default email experience we all know shouldn’t default to essentially a viewport.

Mine blocks any external resources unless you choose to download them with a button on the top of the email. Helps lower their ability to track as well, on top of the other precautions.

But yeah, it's pretty horrendous by default.

> Even in work environments almost everyone uses chat clients these days.

Maybe in your bubble, but globally this is just false.

No kidding. If your org is large enough, you have to communicate with nontechnical people sometimes. Unless you're a Microsoft shop, they probably aren't using your chat platform of choice. Email is still the first stop where I work. Not to mention talking to people _outside_ of my org, which is _most_ communication for me.

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