'View as Plaintext' and/or 'View all message parts' request

[Kostya Vasilyev]

"In AquaMail, you can long press an action icon (e. g. in message view) and get a popup menu with text explanation. "

Which shouldn't surprise anyone, since it's a standard Android feature.

Yes, I can agree that its' less useful than a mouse hover, and much less well-known, and besides...

... I fully agree that the recent Android UI trend towards "what the hell am I looking at and how do I discover what it does... maybe nothing at all" is crazy.

But that's Mr. Sundar Pichai's problem to worry about (or maybe Mr. Matias Duarte's), and I have absolutely no way to influence them.

[KieSeyHow]

"In AquaMail, you can long press an action icon (e. g. in message view) and get a popup menu with text explanation. "

Which shouldn't surprise anyone, since it's a standard Android feature.

Yes, I can agree that its' less useful than a mouse hover, and much less well-known, and besides...

... I fully agree that the recent Android UI trend towards "what the hell am I looking at and how do I discover what it does... maybe nothing at all" is crazy.

But that's Mr. Sundar Pichai's problem to worry about (or maybe Mr. Matias Duarte's), and I have absolutely no way to influence them.

Thank you Kostya, I have already discovered this feature.

I do have still a question how I may view the text part of an a mail message, or if that feature could be added.

Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

[Kostya Vasilyev]

In theory, it could be added.

In practice, I've got lots -- lots -- of other work to do, and don't see your suggestion having a broad enough appeal.

And since this originally came up in the context of LinkedIn messages, let me just try to summarize my view:

Almost every day I'm asked to deal with something that should be someone else's job (some other company, I mean, at providing *their* services). But -- surprise -- I've got my own work to do.

Maybe I'm *too* each to reach via this forum and email, but, hey, maybe those "reputable transnational corporations" could be doing a better job with support too, why aren't they?

[beaky]

Yes, "view source" is not the same as "prefer the plain text part".

However...

Mail apps always (or almost always) give priority to HTML content when both are available (except, I suppose, "mutt", "pine", and others of that type... which I don't have any experience with).

Web mail systems do that too.

So with that in mind, if these messages have defective HTML content, then what does whatever service is sending these (Linkedin?) expect their users to do?

Do they expect everyone to discover "view message source" in whatever mail app they're using? If it's there at all?

How do they expect anyone to even know that something is missing?

To me, that's something that should be fixed in the messages, on the sending side, esp. if this is some sort of automated system.

I was an early adopter of email, before even browsers were invented. So on a pc i normally view the text/plain part by default. Also I like to send plain text too. OK, call me odd!
Wherever I can, I view emails only in plain text to this day. A few months ago I received one that Thunderbird showed correctly as plain text, the html part was present but empty, and I could not read it at all via Aqua Mail.
A few years ago advice was that an email with an html part but no plain text part was most probably spam. I guess this may no longer be the case.

[Kostya Vasilyev]

"A few months ago I received one that Thunderbird showed correctly as plain text, the html part was present but empty"

The other way around happens too, and fairly often:

"Promotional" or in general, automatically generated messages, because the people responsible (broadly speaking) can't ever get it right, even with all the available libraries. Things like inline images marked as attachments, HTML tags in text/plain, anything really...

I'm not a big fan of excessive formatting myself...

[KieSeyHow]

Beaky,

This is the trouble I have with mail, especially newsletters.  Some newsletters show only shortened versions in the html part, but the full content in text.  Also flyers, have a similar issue only showing thumbs in html, but full product descriptions and info in text.  This is why I use Thunderbird as a desktop client.  I can view both parts stacked one over the other, allowing viewing of all the content, and to verify link destinations.

Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

[KieSeyHow]

"A few months ago I received one that Thunderbird showed correctly as plain text, the html part was present but empty"

The other way around happens too, and fairly often:

"Promotional" or in general, automatically generated messages, because the people responsible (broadly speaking) can't ever get it right, even with all the available libraries. Things like inline images marked as attachments, HTML tags in text/plain, anything really...

I'm not a big fan of excessive formatting myself...

Yes, I have received those also.  Those are usually hand written messages, or generated forms from a script, or server module. But, in those cases, you have a bank text part, and only content in html part.  Some smartphones, expecially the older ones, can only view text mail, so this lack of competence on the part of the email creator, creates a problem.

Viewing both parts, stacked one above the other, would fix this problem and once again set the bar for email mobile clients, which AquaMail has done a few times already.

Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

[KieSeyHow]

It is perfectly normal to show inline images as attachments, because well, they are!    They are still attachments, just convereted into uuencode and embedded into the body of the message, like MHT archives.  When you view as HTML, they show as either images, attachments, or both.  When you view as text, they must always show as attachments, since a text only view cannot display any images. But they ARE in fact attachments, no matter how they are handled.  You can embed ANY filetype as in-line, that is how newsreaders work!

Very old modems, used to send ALL THE DATA as uuencode, even large binaries downloaded from a website.  BBS boards did the same.  some of the first viriuses were embedded this way.  You can even embed one mine type, inside another this way.  In fact, that is how old MS Office embeded images inside documents.  Another method is OLE, but OLE does not work very will across domains, as it requires an "image server" CLSID and the software to be present on both the sending and receiving system, and the files in the same relative path locations.  But it is still used on some software.

Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

[beaky]

I have a related issue, apparent (partially) on an email received today.
In the left pane, where the message subject appears and then a line from the body of the email, as a brief extract, it shows words not in the html part (right pane). An example today says (as an extract from the body)
"Single Column Responsive Email Template", followed by the first few words that are in the html: "can't view images?...."

The content type is multipart/alternative.

Now in this case I can imagine the "single column responsive email template" part may be buried somewhere in the html, but just not meant to be rendered.
I have seen instances (though rather rare — I cannot now find one) where the one line extract seems entirely unrelated and almost could be designed to deceive. This could be a risk if what is being shown is text that does not appear in the rendered html, but is somehow hidden with deliberate intent to deceive by exploiting the behaviour of email clients.
As the subject line alone does not always suggest what the email is about, but subject line plus the first few words usually does do this, I was wondering if the one line extract always comes from the same "part" as the rest of the message (that is, either the text/plain or the html part)
Related to this, perhaps, the extract is also sometimes entirely blank, where the message is not.

All this is tiny tiny tiny detail, so do not divert from the main task! Still enjoying aqua mail.

[KieSeyHow]

I have a related issue, apparent (partially) on an email received today.
In the left pane, where the message subject appears and then a line from the body of the email, as a brief extract, it shows words not in the html part (right pane). An example today says (as an extract from the body)
"Single Column Responsive Email Template", followed by the first few words that are in the html: "can't view images?...."

The content type is multipart/alternative.

Now in this case I can imagine the "single column responsive email template" part may be buried somewhere in the html, but just not meant to be rendered.
I have seen instances (though rather rare — I cannot now find one) where the one line extract seems entirely unrelated and almost could be designed to deceive. This could be a risk if what is being shown is text that does not appear in the rendered html, but is somehow hidden with deliberate intent to deceive by exploiting the behaviour of email clients.
As the subject line alone does not always suggest what the email is about, but subject line plus the first few words usually does do this, I was wondering if the one line extract always comes from the same "part" as the rest of the message (that is, either the text/plain or the html part)
Related to this, perhaps, the extract is also sometimes entirely blank, where the message is not.

All this is tiny tiny tiny detail, so do not divert from the main task! Still enjoying aqua mail.

Sorry, tapatalk will not let me quote only the relevant part of your message I wished to respond too... another limited Android app.

Anyhow, I wished to coment about how you felt someone could use the multipart to deceive, or confuse. Yes, and no.  Anything you cannot see, unless it is embedded binaries, is irrelevant as far as security is concerned.  The security issues arise with malformed URLS and embedded scripts or binaries.   Missing message data, is just very annoying if there is no means to view it.  And it renders the message effectively,  undelivered...   Think of it as receiving an envelope at home that you cannot open!

It is perfectly normal to show inline images as attachments, because well, they are!    They are still attachments, just convereted into uuencode and embedded into the body of the message, like MHT archives.  When you view as HTML, they show as either images, attachments, or both.  When you view as text, they must always show as attachments, since a text only view cannot display any images. But they ARE in fact attachments, no matter how they are handled.  You can embed ANY filetype as in-line, that is how newsreaders work!

Very old modems, used to send ALL THE DATA as uuencode, even large binaries downloaded from a website.  BBS boards did the same.  some of the first viriuses were embedded this way.  You can even embed one mine type, inside another this way.  In fact, that is how old MS Office embeded images inside documents.  Another method is OLE, but OLE does not work very will across domains, as it requires an "image server" CLSID and the software to be present on both the sending and receiving system, and the files in the same relative path locations.  But it is still used on some software.

Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

[beaky]

Sorry, tapatalk will not let me quote only the relevant part of your message I wished to respond too... another limited Android app.

On yes you can! need to tap on the pen icon next to the quote, but then you sometimes have to do some hand coding of the quote tags.

Anyhow, I wished to coment about how you felt someone could use the multipart to deceive, or confuse. Yes, and no.  Anything you cannot see, unless it is embedded binaries, is irrelevant as far as security is concerned.  The security issues arise with malformed URLS and embedded scripts or binaries.   Missing message data, is just very annoying if there is no means to view it.  And it renders the message effectively,  undelivered...   Think of it as receiving an envelope at home that you cannot open!

I had in mind "social engineering" rather than security in the sense of risks from embedded code, but fair comment.

[KieSeyHow]

I had in mind "social engineering" rather than security in the sense of risks from embedded code, but fair comment.

Thank you for the hand coding tip!

Yes, social engineering is, and will always remain, the easiest point of entry into a system.  Because most people are not trained or experienced to thwart this method of attack.

Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk

[KieSeyHow]

Is there any chance of a text view option being added to AquaMail for HTML messages in the future?  I am still unable to view some messages properly because the HTML part and the plaintext part are completely different.

Sent from my SM-P900 using Tapatalk