[Kde-pim] [KDE Usability] Terminology Change: "HTML" -> "Rich Text"

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Wednesday 10 July 2013 19:25:16 Marc Deop wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 July 2013 19:17:19 Thomas Pfeiffer wrote:
> > On Wednesday 10 July 2013 16:38:53 Marc Deop wrote:
> > > Why don't we do it the other way around? I mean, enable "Rich Text" by
> > > default and give the power users the option to write in Plain Text.
> > > 
> > > To be honest, nowadays 99% of users expect the email client to be able
> > > to
> > > handle <b> or <a> tags without actually having to write them (I think
> > > it's
> > > called WYSIWYG "what you see is what you get" or something like that).
> > 
> > The reason that "power users" prefer plain text over HTML is not because
> > they hate good looking mails, it is because they are aware of the
> > negative implications of HTML mails on security and privacy.
> > I am a researcher in the field of "usable security", specializing on
> > potentially dangerous emails (e.g. phishing or other scams), so I know
> > that
> > actually, HTML mails are more dangerous to "regular users" (we mostly call
> > them "novices") than "power users" (which we mostly call "experts").
> > Experts know that they should look to the status bar to see what a link
> > in an HTML mail really points to before clicking it, novices don't. They
> > think "If it looks like PayPal, it must be PayPal", since they are not
> > aware that a fancy layout can be copied and pasted with a few keystrokes.
> > And I didn't even mention privacy issues with remote content (which
> > novices do not know anything about either).
> > Though all this has more to do with receiving than with sending HTML
> > mails, it still shows that the shift towards HTML mails in general is
> > detrimental to security and privacy. So, just because others don't care
> > about those topics and think it's a good idea to push for HTML mails,
> > does that mean we have to do the same?
> 
> I realize now that my email looked like I was supporting html emails. My
> apologies, that was not my intention. ( I despise html ways almost the same
> I despise top posting...)

No need to apologize ;) However, I don't think we should base our decision on  
how much we (as "power users") like or dislike HTML emails, but on whether we 
want to encourage "regular users" to write HTML mails or not.
May girlfriend, for example, could be called a "regular user" wrt technical 
knowledge, but she is pretty privacy-aware.
She used to write HTML mails just because that was the default setting of her 
webmail client and she did not know about the privacy and security 
implications of HTML mails.
When I told her about them and showed her that she could change the default, 
she did so immediately and hasn't missed HTML mails ever since.
I am sure that if the default had been plain text, she wouldn't have changed 
that either.
There are cases where HTML mails make a whole lot of sense, but not as the 
default I think.
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