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Send HTML with embedded images emails from Mail
Authored by: wsdr on Apr 16, '07 12:22:28PM

Hey Rob, how about a poll about what users prefer: HTML vs. plain/text?

I send mail using plain/text, and when someone sends me a formatted email, I always flip to the plain/text version if available. Why? I like my text small, so my mail preferences are set to use sizes smaller than the default. Much of the time when I receive html formatted email, this causes the text to be rendered even smaller-- too small to be readable-- but in plain/text mode I can easily read it. And if that is not an option, usually it is junk mail anyway, or I don't care to read it.



Also, related to this, is the wastefulness of sending of attachments via email. Because all email is ultimately transmitted as text, any embedded images or attachments must be encoded in order to be sent. This process generally increases the size of the attachment by a factor of 1/3. (1Mb = 1.3Mb or so when sent via email, sometimes more; I'm sure someone can give a more specific explanation. And, for those more technical, please understand I am totally ignoring all of the other overhead involved in transmitting data in general over an internet connection, and the differences between TCP or UDP, etc., etc.)

Let's use the example of a 1Mb file. When you email an attachment, it travels from your computer out to the SMTP server of your ISP (or your own server). So, 1.3Mb of bandwidth gets consumed between you and your (ISPs) server. The email then gets transmitted from your (ISPs) server to the destination server-- another 1.3Mb of bandwidth gets consumed. (I will ignore the case of multiple SMTP servers, but there is often more than one server involved at larger ISPs, say, Comcast.) The recipient now checks his mail and downloads your message-- another 1.3Mb of bandwidth consumed.

So, a 1Mb file consumes about 4Mb in being transmitted via email. Can this be improved upon? Sure, send it via FTP, or one of the many web-based file-sending services such as yousendit.com or mediafire.com. In each of those cases the total bandwidth consumption will be about 1/2 of that of email. And if you use iChat to send it directly, the total bandwidth consumption is about 1/4 as it would be sending via email!



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Send HTML with embedded images emails from Mail
Authored by: wsdr on Apr 20, '07 06:54:40AM