Re: [epub] HTML ezines

[Jack <jj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Jack <jj@workbench.net>

At 05:02 PM 9/15/1999 -0500, Brian Alt wrote:
>From: Brian Alt <brian.alt@list-universe.com>
>
>Hi folks,
>
>(Quiet list lately. Is everybody on vacation all at once? ;-)
>
>Here's a question: Have any of you successfully implemented
>an HTML-format ezine? If so, do you also offer a text version?
>What do you see as the advantages/disadvantages of each?
>
>A lot of people (including myself) used to be pretty pro-text,
>anti-HTML. Recently though, I'm starting to see some really
>great HTML newsletters, and it seems that they're becoming
>more widely accepted.
>
>What do you think? ;-)

Personally, I don't like them.  Given a choice, I will always take the 
plain-text version; where there's no choice I generally don't subscribe at 
all.  The reason is that as others have pointed out, one of two things 
happens.  If you are reading your e-mail remotely using Pine (which I do 
when I am away from home),  you see gibberish (well, actually the raw HTML 
code, but it ain't pretty).  On the other hand, if I am reading my e-mail 
at home, invariably HTML mail goes out to the 'net and tries to load some 
stuff.  I recently made the mistake of upgrading my e-mail program (won't 
say which one because I'm not sure anyone else has experienced the problem, 
and I don't want to make disparaging remarks if the problem only exists on 
my system) and once in a while, if it loads a long HTML e-mail and then 
tries to go out and get something from the 'net, it actually crashes the 
e-mail program (and I'm not sure that it hasn't actually crashed my entire 
system on a couple occasions).

Even when the e-mail program or system doesn't crash, there can be a 
considerable delay between the time when you click on the e-mail message 
and the time it actually opens, so if I know in advance that a message 
contains HTML formatting, I usually skip it until a time when I have more 
time to read it - and most of those messages eventually get deleted 
unread.  So if you are wanting people to actually READ your e-zine, as 
opposed to simply having subscriber numbers, I suspect you will get more 
actual readership if you stick with plain text.  Some people ma be too lazy 
to unsubscribe (or may have forgotten how) but that doesn't mean they are 
actually going to click on a piece of e-mail that they know may take 
possibly half a minute or more to open.

Also, I have another insight on this.  A friend of mine started a support 
mailing list for adults who have Attention Deficit Disorder.  About the 
time that e-mail programs started to appear that were capable of generating 
"styled text" (basically another name for HTML mail), many of the list 
members started complaining that it broke their e-mail readers.  Turned out 
that many of these folks actually read the list from work, but since they 
didn't want a support group list sent to their work accounts (for fairly 
obvious reasons) they were using some alternative form of access to get to 
their personal accounts (such as using Pine via a shell account at their 
ISP - many smaller ISP's actually do allow access to shell accounts on 
request).  When people tried to "fancy up" their text, it again caused all 
the formatting codes to appear when the message was being read.  Other 
complained because they actually found all the extra stuff distracting 
rather than helpful.  So, he finally went to a "no styled text" rule that 
is pretty strictly enforced.  Granted that it's possible that people with 
ADD may find the "enhancements" more irritating than others, but those 
folks will also make up a certain percentage of your readership.

So I think the best thing is to either do plain text only, or offer two 
version, unless you simply don't care about the readers who either can't 
handle or don't want to deal with the enhanced text.  Now if you ask again 
in 5-10 years, when (hopefully) 95%+ of the Internet connections are 
high-bandwidth, I may have a different take on it.  But we are still a long 
way from being at that point yet.  If you absolutely don't want to do a 
plain text version, then just post your 'zine on the web, and send out an 
e-mail with a clickable link (only) - this at least gives me the option of 
not going to the web site if for some reason I can't handle HTML at the moment.

Just my $.02 worth...

Jack


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