Robin Whittle wrote:
>...
> Here is a suggested rewrite of the dialogue box - to help people who
> do not understand what HTML is.
>
> Your email used formatting, such as colors, font settings and
> headings which can only be sent using HTML.
>
> Some recipients cannot view HTML emails - and one or more of the
> recipients of this message is not listed as being able to
> receive HTML email.
>
> Would you like to convert the message to plain text or send it
> in HTML anyway?
>
> O Send in Plain Text and HTML
> All recipients will be able to read your message - but
> only those who can read HTML messages will see your
> formatting.
>
> X Send in Plain Text only
> All recipients will receive your text without formatting.
>
> O Send in HTML only.
> Recipients who cannot view HTML email will not be able
> to read your message.
>
> Its longer, but email is the most important function of the Net, I
> think so it is worth lots of trouble to get it right.
With an alert that long (it's an alert, not a dialog, because it's an
interruption rather than an intended part of the user's task), perhaps 5
percent of people will be bothered reading it at all.
As for the other 95 percent, which button they press will depend on
their personality. Either they'll blindly click `OK' without reading the
message (on the assumption that the computer knows what's best), or
they'll blindly click `Cancel' without reading the message (on the
assumption that any alert that large must be something bad), whereupon
they'll wonder why the message hasn't been sent.
Or, if they happen to be at an Internet cafe, they'll #@$%! come and ask
me for help.
With the current alert, perhaps 30 percent of people will be bothered
reading it. Making it any longer would be hopeless. To add insult to
injury, the current alert uses radio buttons where it should use push
buttons (wasting mouse clicks), and it uses an icon (the question mark
icon) which should not exist in Mozilla at all.
> Because it is a
> unidirectional thing, and because you may never hear from the
> recipient if they can't read your message, it is vital that messages
> be sent in a form they can be read.
True. I tend to delete HTML mail unread -- partly out of annoyance with
the sender's waste of my bandwidth, partly because HTML-ness is a very
good predictor of spam-ness, and partly because it's usually in a
too-small font. (In 4.x about a dozen key-presses are required to zoom
the text to a reasonable size, and Seamonkey lacks the ability to do it
at all.)
> I mow understand what you wrote earlier. Mozilla uses the HTML
> composer and then converts to plain text.
Perhaps the worst of all possible worlds. :-] Neither the sender *nor*
the recipient sees what is intended.
>...
> I just got a fresh HotMail account and it composes in fixed width
> plain text,
Unless you're using MS Internet Explorer 5.0 or later for Windows, you
obviously have no option *but* to use plain text. A good HTML editor
embeddable in a Web page would be a huge (I hesitate to use the word
`revolutionary') feature for blogging and Web authoring purposes (even
ignoring its potential use for Webmail), but the various people
interested in implementing it in Mozilla (see occasional posts in
n.p.m.editor) don't seem to have been able to get any traction with the
module owners.
As for the fixed-width-ness of the textarea, that generally depends on
the browser.
>...
> (An answer could be found in my most depressing thesis, which I won't
> elaborate - a broad and condemnatory generalisation which I am
> constantly trying to tell myself is not as true as sometimes I fear -
> that "people like shit". That's on a bad day. Most of the time, most
> of the people I know, want straightforward clear functional things -
> at least in the computer/Internet parts of their lives.)
Microsoft software is very popular, and this is only partly because of
abuse of their effective OS monopoly. Microsoft knows that even
poorly-implemented features sell better than security, reliability, or
interoperability do. (In a nutshell, this is because humans are
pathologically bad at handling low-probability high-damage risks, such
as those of e-mail viruses; debates over the merits of nuclear power and
weaponry are the most extreme example of the same problem.) Usenet
regulars and Linux/Unix users, who typically have a different set of
priorities, regularly rant and fume (or, in your case, depressedly
thesisize) about the rest of humanity as a result.
--
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla UI Design component default assignee thing
<http://mozilla.org/>
