Re: Wave 3 makes the Hotmail UI as convenient as punch cards

Anonymous wrote:

Is there some other standard that specifies the format of the
To: field?

Only by whatever code is implemented within an e-mail client. It could
use vertical bar characters if it wanted to. Semicolons used to be
used, commas were added, but anything could be used (as long as it
weren't part of a valid e-mail address) to delimit the entries in an
input field in the UI of a program.

Does the same apply to any typing? Should all word processors lose the
ability to correct a single letter within a word?

I don't believe the e-mail address converts to an object in the display
until you go to the next e-mail address or move out of the input field.
For example, when you want to reply to someone in a newsgroup using
e-mail and Outlook Express, it'd be nice if you could just backspace or
edit the munged e-mail address that shows up in the To field of the
new-mail window in OE. But what happens is that when you try to edit
the e-mail address it gets completely wiped from the To field and you
have to enter all of it. So rather than letting you edit out the
munging characters, you have to enter the entire e-mail address (or
copy-n-paste the string and edit that). So that the object disappears
(deletes) when you want to edit it is not unique to just the Wave 3 Live
Hotmail UI but also in local applications, too.

I wrote that order *is* important.

I've never before seen any recipient that thought they had to be the
first one listed in the To *field* (in the *data* of the message) in
order to perceive that message as important to them or that they got
first billing. Fact is, if you are mailing to multiple recipients, some
will obviously not get first billing.

Maybe you should consider using the Bcc field if your recipients are to
ego sensitive as to want to be first in some pecking order. Put the
name of your mailing list in the To field (which is a contact record in
your address book that merely points at your own e-mail address). Then
each recipient won't see their name at all but instead sees the mailing
list name in the To header. They don't have to worry about their order
in the list of recipients because no recipients will be listed for them
to see.

Or maybe use MailMerge or a bulk mail program so just that recipient is
shown in the To header so they are so special as to receive their own
unique copy.

I don't want all the features -- I just want functional To: fields, a
message body that doesn't get corrupted, and the ability to choose plain text
by default.

Guess it's time to investigate using a different webmail provider whose
UI has the behaviors that you want; however, since it is their property,
that other webmail vendor can still change their UI whenever they want.
Ajax seems to be gaining popularity so expect many to change their UI.

If you cannot install software on the other hosts, try using an e-mail
client that can be installed or copied onto a USB thumb drive. Then you
simply plug in the thumb drive on the other computer, no install
required, and you run it from there and store your messages there. I
haven't tried this with any Microsoft e-mail clients but I've seen
several posts in Mozilla groups about how to run Thunderbird from a
thumb drive. Then you'll have the local e-mail client with a UI that
won't change (from the version you install as long as you don't upgrade
it which could, again, result in a UI change).

Um, what HTML? I'm taking about the plain-text body of an email I composed.

Did you compose in RTF, HTML edit, or Plain-Text mode? There are 3
different compose modes in Wave 3 Live Hotmail. HTML is the default.

The body is contained within an HTML TEXTAREA text box , but that shouldn't
mess with the line breaks in the plain text within that field.

That control merely defines the boundary of an input object; see
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.7 and
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#text-input. It does
not control the formatting within that area (but TEXTAREA will provide
multiple lines). If you want to compose in HTML but fix the formatting
to equate to plain-text mode then use the <PRE></PRE> tags to delimit
your message.

I am using plain text.

Not if you are seeing a TEXTAREA object in the received e-mail.

Entering ASCII characters in the input field does not itself qualify as
plain text mode. Did you actually switch away from the default RTF mode
to HTML Edit or Plain-Text mode using the toolbar dropdown button?

No, if I put line breaks inside a TEXTAREA inside an HTML page, the line
breaks *would* be rendered by my browser.

So you selected the Plain-Text mode using the toolbar button in the UI
for Live Hotmail? Line wrapping doesn't involve a <BR> HTML tag if you
are actually entering ASCII characters. If you are using RTF mode,
switch to HTML Edit mode to check if the <BR> tags are actually getting
inserted.
.