Composing mail message using HTML?

Question

Hello,
I have been using Microsoft Outlook for all of my mail activities (and Microsoft Entourage prior to Outlook) for several years now. Because of MobileMe and the coming "iCloud" service, I would like to switch over to Apple's "Mail" program. I think I have it all set up correctly, however, I am having a difficult time figuring out how to send email using HTML. I have located the preferences where you can choose either "plain text" or "rich text", but rich text does not seem to be HTML because I sent a rich text message to myself, and I viewed it in Outlook where it was simply plain text.
What am I missing? If HTML is in there, it's really well hidden---I just can't seem to find it. Any suggestions?
Thank you very much.
Message was edited by: smitty195

Answer 1

smitty195 wrote:
Whoa.....that is VERY interesting! I definitely prefer sending out HTML emails because I feel that they look more professional, and the plain text emails look kinda "blah". The reason I find this so interesting is because Apple is so ahead of the curve in so many areas, and this seems way behind the times. They must have a reason for doing this, although offhand I can't come up with one.
Because if you are trying to exchange e-mails with people who have really poor e-mail clients, they won't be able to see anything. E-mail is pretty much a lowest-common denominator. Apple has been steadily dumbing down Apple Mail over the years to make it more compatible with Outlook. There is an e-mail standard for "rich text" messages. Apple was the only company that ever supported it as far as I know. Netscape and Microsoft both came up with HTML e-mail on their own and that became the de-facto standard.
Thank you for the tip of creating a signature with styled text. I've never used a signature before, so I suppose I'll have to start doing that. Yikes.
There are a number of tutorial sites for making really fancy signatures. I've never really used any of them, but if you want to play around, search for "apple mail fancy signature". I normally avoid saying "go Goggle for it", but in this case, there are a number of examples and they are significantly different. You have to find one that makes the most sense to you.
Keep in mind that standard e-mail complexities always apply. You have no guarantee about how your fancy e-mail or signature will be displayed. It may look great in Apple Mail and it could be awful or non-existent in some other client or some webmail tool.
E-mail is just a mess.