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

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"VanguardLH" wrote:
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.

Well, it would make a lot of sense to have a standard, since a different
email client which receives the message has to be able to parse the To: field
to do a Reply All.

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.

Yes, that's true.

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.

Thank you -- so you agree that this UI change is for the worse.

I wrote that order *is* important.

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.

Sure, blame the user when the software is inflexible, and basic editing
features are taken away.

The content of the email messages I write, which includes the To: header, is
*my* business. Software should make it as easy as possible for me to get it
the way I want.

since it is their property,
that other webmail vendor can still change their UI whenever they want.

Of course they can. I never said they couldn't. But in this case, they
*shouldn't*.

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.

You're assuming all the computers I use have USB slots and run the same
operating system.

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.

Plain text -- I said so several times.

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.

If you want to compose in HTML

I don't.

I am using plain text.

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

No email was received -- I'm talking about email I compose. The TEXTAREA
isn't in the email -- it's the part of Hotmail's message composition web page
which contains the message body text.

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?

I sure did switch to Plain Text.

Line breaks in plain text messages I compose work fine, *except* when
Hotmail reports an error on a send attempt, and sends me back to the message
compose page. In that case, the message body has all its line breaks
removed, which is clearly a bug.
.

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