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Re: [LUG] Email clients for newbies

 

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011, Brad Rogers wrote:

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011 17:27:45 +0000
Grant Sewell <dcglug@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello Grant,

Any reasons for this sentiment?

Because webmail encourages everything that's done wrong in email;

top posting, over quoting of previous text, use of html.

Then there are the issues regarding threading (reference headers
transported, but ignored), the way gmail doesn't forward (by default)
list mail to the sender.

There are no doubt other things I can't think of right now, but you get
the idea.

That's all down to the education (or lack of) of the person being introduced to the email system.

Webmail is no different from any other email system in the respect of top-posting for example. When I replied to this message, the cursor was at the top, and I could have started to type at the top, but I chose to move the cursor to the end and type.

Same for overquiting - I could have left everythin in (which I did do in this case), or delete it - supposed to be easy with a mouse?)

Use of html - deal with it. My own personal squirellmail system doesn't send email in HTML. It's a little tick-box. You can switching this on or off in Outlook, or most other email programs that I've used.

Threading - well maybe, but that's no different really from any other email package - hosted or run local - it's up to the implementor to get it right (or not).

As for forwarding list email to the sender? Huh? When I reply to a list email, I get a choice of who to reply to - in other email systems I've used, I get a button to click - reply to sender or to all. It's not hard to pick the right one.

Or maybe you've just had a bad experience of gmail and are tarring all with the same brush...

We're talking newbies here - every year I set up squirrel mail for a bunch of newbies - a group of young people 12-18 who've never used anything other than webmail, and probably won't ever use anything other than a hosted email system for the rest of their lives. Get used to it... They seem to cope OK.

Gordon

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