Forum Moderators: phranque

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Email revolution - new mime type

Lets fix emails - its not that hard!

         

Sch09

7:20 pm on Mar 14, 2017 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi Folks,

So I've been thinking ... email is broken. You either have to use tables or inline CSS and certainly none of the nicer HTML entities. So ....

Why don't we start a revolution - why don't we start promoting the idea of a new mime type - for example:

text/ehtml

Where ehtml indicates that the message is an email designed in HTML with the following elements:

1) External images
2) External CSS

This would move us away from the old school tables based method to a newer HTML5 based beautiful emails situation. For the readers and websites it won't be hard - if they're working already then just add an extra MIME type and if you're not then its time to get fixed!

But won't it make email messages much larger? Well not really! Because by moving all CSS to offline stylesheets you'll only be transmitting the HTML. And without all the unnecessary TRs and TDs your HTML will be a lot tidier and compact!

Theres a thought. Why not share it and see if we can start something new.

Antony

tangor

9:45 pm on Mar 14, 2017 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



We already have HTML "rich" texting ... we also have an enormous legacy/requirement to plaintext. Frankly I prefer the latter and force my email to both send and receive in that fashion. There's enough clutter on the web itself without pounding my inbox, too. There is a final thought in that THIRD PARTY is usually routinely nixed in email, I know that I make sure it is nuked for security reasons.

phranque

9:48 pm on Mar 14, 2017 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



all the "MIME types" you need have already been defined - in this case you want The 'text/html' Media Type:
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2854.txt [rfc-editor.org]

what you are actually asking for has also been defined (>20 years ago) and is called MIME.

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2045 [tools.ietf.org]

piatkow

10:36 pm on Mar 16, 2017 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month




I know that I make sure it is nuked for security reasons.

You are not alone