As much as I love the idea of a fully plain text life, I've decided that naked email is, for me, a step too far. Switching to plain text email means losing product thumbnails, inline links, and visual formatting that makes some emails useful.
This week I've written about my response to the useplaintext.email website, plus some of the things I do to avoid the traps that HTML emails can hide.
Medium medium.com/@miscellaneplans/whβ¦
Blog ellanew.com/2025/11/17/ptpl-18β¦
R.L. Dane π΅
in reply to Ellane • • •I love #Thunderbird's simple html mode. It gives you just enough HTML to get the jist of what's going on, without giving full control over the author of the email.
It's a nice middle road. :D
Leif Samuelsson reshared this.
Ellane
in reply to R.L. Dane π΅ • • •Hyde π· π
in reply to Ellane • • •@rl_dane I like plain text or minimal HTML emails.
I dont like images in emails for the simple reason that the mail isnt a browser.
All those companies should send a link to a beautiful page on their website, but not having heavy mails with so much useless things in it.
And, the worst, is the replies above all the other mails. I despise it so much.
The replies should be quoted with just the part that you reply to(cf. the 1855 RFC) Sometimes you have emails over 1000 lines...
Ellane
in reply to Hyde π· π • • •@hyde There are definitely some strong feelings around the topic, I realised that on perusing the useplaintext.email website! The most important thing is to know what you want, and stick with that.
I like your idea of having a link to a page on your website rather than an image-rich email. I've started doing that with my own emails for blog posts, including just a one-minute summary of the post with a link to read the whole thing.
@rl_dane
R.L. Dane π΅
in reply to Ellane • • •Johnny βDecimalβ Noble
in reply to Ellane • • •@hyde @rl_dane Even with my audience I sent a purely plaintext email and more than one person wrote me and told me my mail was broken!
I've since fallen back to really basic email, RTF style. You don't have to go full website to present things like links and italic text.
Hyde π· π
in reply to Johnny βDecimalβ Noble • • •@johnnydecimal
Maybe a link in the signature to a webpage that explains that your mail isn't broken could help π
@ellane @rl_dane
R.L. Dane π΅
in reply to Hyde π· π • • •Yes, I especially don't like to load remote images, because they often have tracking pixels* and junk like that.
*a clear 1x1 pixel image where the filename is a unique identifier to let them know that/when you're viewing their email
Hyde π· π
in reply to R.L. Dane π΅ • • •@rl_dane π―
That's why some good client / provider block them by default.
@ellane
Sashin
in reply to R.L. Dane π΅ • • •Ellane
in reply to Sashin • • •@sashin Not sure if this is what you're after, but there are instructions for Thunderbird here: useplaintext.email/#thunderbirβ¦
@rl_dane
Use plain text email
useplaintext.emailR.L. Dane π΅
in reply to Ellane • • •That's different. Simple HTML mode still uses html for sending (and receiving), but only pays attention to the really basic HTML tags. So you still see the incoming mail as rich text, just not with all of the crazy formatting options.
I don't have Thunderbird set up on the machine I'm on right now, but I believe it's just in the View menu: View -> Message Body -> { Original Html, Simple HTML, Plain Text }