

Finally: Gmail Introduces Rich Text Signatures - davidedicillo
http://mashable.com/2010/07/09/gmail-rich-text-signatures/

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mcantor
" _Finally_?"

" _Finally_ ," Gmail introduces rich text signatures?

Not, "Finally, America Gets Out of Debt" or, "Finally, a Global Inter-Cultural
Renaissance" or hell, even "Finally, a Fast T-Mobile Android Phone With an
Effing Slide-Out Keyboard," but, " _Finally_... Gmail Introduces _Rich Text
Signatures_?" _This_ is what we were waiting for, with bated breath and
Cheetoh-dust-encrusted fingertips?

I'm not angry, internet. I'm just disappointed.

~~~
sree_nair
Finally only means that someone has been waiting for the mentioned stuff for a
long time. It doesn't imply that it was the most important thing for the
person.

~~~
mcantor
You're absolutely correct; I just couldn't resist anyway.

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sramov
Finally! We can now all use colors! And perky styles! And images!

Excellent! I am seriously considering just dropping all HTML email. Want your
email to be received and read? Use the god damn plain text. You now, just
_write_ the email.

~~~
endtime
Yeah, great idea. Formatting _never_ adds information to plain text.

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iron_ball
I wouldn't say _never_. But pretty close.

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tiles
Hey, you expressed emphasis in plain text without using formatting!

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mattmillr
No, just markup. Much easier to parse...

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smackfu
Rage, rage against HTML emails like it's 1999.

But since GMail already supports rich text emails, this seems like a pretty
obvious feature to add.

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RiderOfGiraffes
To all those who rail against HTML emails ...

Yes, I agree that almost all email can and should be plain text. And yes, I
agree that most people who use colors and fonts and formatting should be
prevented from doing so, because so many of them do it in a way that detracts
from clarity.

However, some of us deal with real people as opposed to those who are
interesting in and competent at technology. I often deal with people who can't
fill in web forms because they can't click in a box to give it focus. I deal
with people who can't email me if I use an anti-spammed email address such as
my_name(at)domain(dot)com. I deal with people who can't find the underscore
("_") and don't know the difference between square and round brackets. I deal
with people who sometimes put a space after a period, and sometimes don't.

I deal with _normal_ people for whom computers are a mysterious tool that does
inexplicable things unless they stick to the very few things they've been
shown.

Trust me - they don't know how to tell their email client _not_ to use HTML.

And "normal" people want colors, and fonts, and formatting, and bullets. They
won't use plain text, even if they could.

ADDED IN EDIT: I've noticed that this comment has had a down-vote, but no
reply. That's a shame. I'd really like to hear a considered and well-argued
counter. Please, if was you who down-voted this, or if you simply disagree
with it, let us know your thoughts. Thanks.

~~~
tomjen3
Normal people may want to things, but I don't want them nor do I want to see
it in the emails I get.

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mkuhn
Besides the rich text editing capability is the option to have a different
signature for every email address associated with your account.

This will further increase the usability of Gmail for me, especially in
combination with the recently added feature that allows to send emails with a
different email address directly from Gmail.

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sesqu
Recently? I've used that feature for years, and just recently disabled it
because of the mess it inevitably causes when you reply from pr@nsa.gov to a
message sent to blanchesun@esp-squad.org - or, in this case, when someone
replies to a portion of your message conspicuously missing from sent-mail.

~~~
mkuhn
There was always the possibility to add other addresses but when sending
emails with those as a sender it displayed something like "sent on behalf of
xx@gmail.com". With a recent addition it has become possible to use your email
providers SMTP server [1] so you can avoid this.

You can also set that you always answer from the address the email was sent
to.

[1]
[http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=m...](http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=22370)

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avar
Now if I could only configure it to bottom-post by default I'd be happy.

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tvon
What I'd really like is for a mail client to find a way to make inline
responses simple and intuitive, to the point that your average user would
think to do it.

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hernan7
Am I the only one that doesn't like inline responses? Most of the time they
feel awkward to me. I do use them when responding email from a couple of co-
workers that are inlining fans; and when I need to add a point-by-point reply
to some technical email.

The rest of the time, however, I top-post proudly. Feels like the closest
thing to writing a reply letter.

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alextingle
E-mails are plain text. "Rich text" has no business there.

~~~
tvon
Luddite.

~~~
jorangreef
There's a difference between resisting progress and promoting simplicity.

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tvon
Simplicity for whom?

I agree that on high traffic lists email should be kept to plain text, but for
your daily business/social use it's far simple to format an email with html or
rich text than it is to rely on ascii decorations for text markup, footnotes
or any kind of table/diagram.

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tzs
I used to be one of those who argued email should be plain text. I gave up
because it was clear we lost. After I thought about it a while I realized we
lost because we were wrong.

Imagine an alternate reality, very similar to our current reality. It has
computers and computer networks, but for some reason, it never occurred to
anyone to invent email. Networks are used for file transfers and web browsing
and stuff like that.

Finally, someone gets the idea for email. Are they going to make it plain
text? Of course not. They are going to want email to be an online alternative
to regular postal mail, and so are going to try to match the features of
postal mail.

Postal mail is often generated by composing in a word processor, printing the
result, and mailing it. It is not limited to plain text. It can have bold and
italic and colors and different typefaces and sizes. It can have embedded
photos and graphics. It can have attachments (other printed itms, or a CD can
be dropped in the envelope).

Email is going to have to support all that to be a viable alternative to
postal mail. And thus email in this alternate reality would very likely start
off as HTML email (or perhaps as .doc email).

Now back to our reality. In our reality, email was invented early in the
computer age, when the technology simply didn't exist to match the graphical
and formatting capabilities of postal mail. Hence, it was plain text--as that
is all the technology could reasonably handle.

Well, we've got better technology now. Saying we should stick with the
limitations that were imposed by 40+ year old technology is about as dumb as
saying that we should limit thumb drives to 80 kilobytes because that was the
capacity of floppies 40+ years ago.

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w1ntermute
How about they add some useful features, like support for sending time-delayed
emails? I've been waiting for that for years, and have instead been doing it
using a desktop client.

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bitwize
At long last!

I will be able to close all my Gmails with my (handwritten) signature and a
corporate logo!

(I've worked for people who do this.)

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csallen
Disappointed this doesn't seem to work for Google Apps (yet), as my work
account is where I'd benefit most from including working links in the
signature.

~~~
mooism2
The earlier story said it was only live in the desktop client for now. Mobile
and web users have to wait.

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stingraycharles
I don't see this feature yet, is it perhaps enabled for a select number of
accounts?

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powrtoch
Prepare for the Papyrus-storm.

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mhd
alt.fan.warlord would be very upset.

(Oh my, Usenet references. I surely date myself.)

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wildmXranat
Yay Google, can you hear me clapping all the way back in the nineties ?

