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'''HTML email''' is the use of a subset of HTML (often ill-defined) to provide formatting and [[semantic web|semantic]] markup capabilities in [[email]] that are not available with [[plain text]].
Most graphical [[e-mail client]]s support HTML email, and many default to it.<ref>[http://www.expita.com/nomime.html#programs Configuring Mail Clients to Send Plain ASCII Text] - E-mail client programs</ref> Many of these clients include both a [[GUI]] editor for composing HTML e-mails and a rendering engine for displaying received HTML e-mails.
== Controversy ==
<!-- This section will be dissolved and the same facts covered in the general article body eventually, in line with [[Wikipedia:Criticism]] -->
Use of HTML in e-mail is controversial:
=== Benefits ===
* The sender can express complex formatting, such as [[subscript]]s and [[superscript]]s, in scientific or [[mathematical formula]]s. Note that [[Unicode]] supports many such complex characters; however, font support issues with Unicode limit the usefulness of this possibility.
* The sender can properly express headings, emphasize text, or use other visual cues to improve the readability and aesthetics of the message.
=== Drawbacks ===
* A few recipients have [[e-mail client]]s that cannot display HTML. This may be mitigated by the inclusion of an automatically generated plain text version, which may be missing important formatting information (e.g. an equation may lose a superscript and take on an entirely new meaning).
* HTML e-mail is larger than plain text. Even if no special formatting is used, there will be the overhead from all the tags needed in a minimal HTML document, and if formatting is heavily used it may be much higher (e.g. a single fully specified font tag is at least equivalent to a full sentence of text). Many email clients are configured to send a plain text version of a message along with the HTML version, further increasing the size.
* Some senders may excessively rely upon large, colorful, or distracting fonts making all but the shortest messages more difficult to read.
* HTML allows for a link to have a different target than the link's text. This can be a security issue for users, who may be fooled into believing that a link points to the website of an authoritative source (such as a bank) and unintentionally [[phishing|revealing personal details to a scammer]].
* The viewing of embedded external content, such as an [[Digital image|image]] in an email, can alert a third party that the e-mail has been opened. This is a potential privacy risk, and the reason for which some e-mail clients do not load external images by default.
* Most [[E-mail spam]] is sent in HTML so spam filters (such as [[Spamassassin]]) give high spam scores to HTML messages.
* Many HTML-based GUI [[email client]]s automatically convert common plain text characters, e.g. - and ", into non-plain text equivalents. This can cause translation problems in other users' clients.
For these reasons many [[Electronic mailing list|mailing list]]s deliberately block HTML e-mail, either stripping out the HTML part to just leave the plain text part or rejecting the entire message.
== References==
<references/>
== External links ==
* [http://mailformat.dan.info/body/html.html Dan's Mail Format Site]
* [http://www.expita.com/nomime.html Configuring Mail Clients to Send Plain ASCII Text] - Argues that HTML (and MIME in general) should never be used in mail
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