I know that sticking to text-only email has been a conscious choice on RIM's part. What I want to know is if there is any movement toward implementing HTML email in future releases? Anyone know a little birdie inside RIM?

Other than asking someone like Boy Genious, you'll have to make a suggestion to these guys --> .

if enough people complain, then perhaps RIM will do something.

If enough carriers and government agencies also complain, that would help more.....

HTML email is a Bug, not a Feature.

1. Their bloated carcasses float around the internet carrying sickly sweet cows and hearts and colored wallpaper that add nothing to the message.

2. They are larger, and thus the more there are of them, the greater the impact to email servers.

3. Allows our co-workers with bloated egos (you know who I'm referring to here don't you..) to make 3inch signatures for themselves with hideous fonts and ridiculously stupid scrolling javascript.

4. Prevent my email from arriving sooner because my work server is clogged up dealing with their bloated carcasses.

5. See #1

Not that I feel strongly about this subject or anything...

Html is silly and useless for communication. If you can't accomplish it with a few precise words all the bright blue scrolling fonts in the world won't help you.

And, yeah, bloated carcass describes html email perfectly.

B

Keep in mind that the BlackBerry is designed around security. Allowing the use of HTML email opens up a whole new world of security related issues. I have no doubt that RIM is working on HTML email, but wants to address the security aspects before releasing it.

most of the previous comments sound very much like "it's a professional business tool - it doesn't need a camera".

more so than security, the biggest driving forces in "limiting" the messaging to text-only are delivery speed and network bandwidth as maintained by the carriers.

with wider networks and greater speeds, combined with faster processors and better onscreen rendering and SVG, html email on a 'berry will be here soon enough. (especially with the iPhone and now Windows Mobile 6 set to deliver fancy email!)

I would agree, if Mobile Windozzz will be offering it, RIM seriously needs to look at this capability. I would be happy with just having an option to turn it on while viewing a specific message. If not RIM, maybe some third party?

Chalk me up as a big "NO" on HTML email. Chinasaur said it perfectly.

RIM has already done a good job of building two separate systems. the BES has always had more refined and secure communication, and given the fairly solid lockdown-via-BES of hardware abilities, it would be narrowminded to think them unable (or unwilling) to do this with html email.

(technically, they wouldn't need to do anything to the BES side...)

I don't mind HTML as long as the formatting is kept to a minimum. Heck, I even send my e-mail in HTML format from Outlook, although I don't really do any formatting on it except the occasional bold or underline.

Anyway, regardless of what we think of HTML email, it doesn't matter. People are going to send HTML email, especially less computer-savvy people (executives). It would be nice if the device could at least render it minimally to make it readable. I could care less about the images and fancy sigs, but at the very least strip out all the html code and convert the <br>'s to line breaks so I can read the thing.

Blackberry had better start supporting HTML soon or they're going to see a lot of companies moving to Windows Mobile. With Exchange 2007, Microsoft has really improved the functionality of Windows Mobile to where there it's almost as good for email, etc. as Blackberry. Not that I like it, Windows Mobile is too hard to use, but there are business workflow processes, etc., that rely on automated HTML email correspondence the Blackberry doesn't handle very well and Windows Mobile does. I hope they start supporting HTML soon.

Chinasaur, you have several good points and I don't dispute them. But there are some bonafide reasons why HTML email would be a good idea. Here's one that I'm working on.

I have an application which emails managment staff to request approvals for various items. I can place a link in the email to an HTML form where they register their approval ( or disapproval ). But a better solution would be to send the form embedded in an email and save one fetch transaction across the net.

HTML e-mail? Who sends that?

Actually a few do, normally its advertisments from companys like EBAY if you happen to subscribed. Or most of the time, HTML email is spam or some fool trying to sell you viagra

ie - check spam folder in gmail.

I'll agree with you that HTML email *can* be a security risk but only if your implementation and support of it is designed in a poor way. Outlook and Outlook Express would be perfect examples of this.... Thunderbird and Apple's "Mail" would be two examples of clients that do NOT have security issues with HTML emails. I'd like to think that RIM would do a good job with it and learn from the mistakes MS has made with their implementation.

I am neutral on HTML email. If it is supported, great. If not, no big deal.
Might be off topic here, but what I would like to see if a better way to sort email. outlook 2003 allow you to group by conversations, by flags etc. I think this will definitely be very useful and needed.

I seem to recall that we used the same argument about security around the previously very limited Bluetooth implementation on the BB. After a while, RIM came around and is currently supporting things like BT modem tethering, etc.

I suspect HTML will be the same way.

I agree that HTML mail is a bad idea, but with so many people using it RIM will be forced to support it to stay competitive.

A few years ago I used MAC O/S exclusively and managed my mail with a client called Mailsmith

Mailsmith is a text only client that will neither render html nor allow for composition in that format. It has a unique way of handling html messages though; by allowing you to click on a link you can open html messages up in your default web browser (which is the proper tool to handle html)

Would this be a possible alternative for the Blackberry do you think. Rather than polluting the client to just pass html messages off to a web browser?

Blame The Smileys!!!!