Looking for a crappy email client [closed]

Question

I wrote some code to send email as both HTML & Text, and I am having having trouble testing it.

On Thunderbird and Outlook, there is an option to view as plain-text, however I have a feeling that they are being smart and doing something to the plain text (because it looks slightly different in thunderbird than in outlook).

What's the crappiest email client out there? One that simply has no HTML support and would not be smart enough to convert HTML to text by itself.

I'd like to see the worst solution.

Albedo

haha, interesting question. I'd like to see some answers (unfortunately I don't have any). – Cotten

Could it just be the fonts/size of fonts/size of viewport difference? – Radiancy

Am I too late to recommend Outlook Express 6? The only thing that is more crappy than it's email support is it's newsgroup support :) – Bissonnette

mail-tester.com will show you both the text/html and text/plain versions of your email. It runs a bunch of other useful tests, as well. – Distil

Answer 1

mail on *nix is an option. Use it on a terminal, and there's no way you'll get automatic conversion of HTML!

( If mail is too crappy, you can try another text based email client, that is actually easy to use and often installed - Alpine ( although, if you want to err on the side of crappy go for Pine instead ) )

Admonitory

How do I do that? I have access to a linux machine but does that mean I need to create an email account hosted on that machine and setup some MX servers and such? – Albedo

@nute - I have never used mail... it's crappy like you wanted. I have used Alpine which is actually quite easy to use, and also text based... but it's not all that crappy imo ;) – Admonitory

Alpine is awesome and the perfect match for what I was looking for. And they have a Windows binary. – Albedo

Answer 2

Lotus Notes. Even simple HTML is likely to be mauled. This would be a perfect application, and the only suitable purpose it could possibly fulfill. While you're at it, you can get a great example of how to design a bad interface.

Are you dealing with technical people with this? I can't imagine many people use something like Mutt except for CS professors and people who read SO, but realistically not many common readers (other than internal company email at places with limited computers like POS systems) use non-HTML mail.

Also, look into how it looks without externally linked images because most webmail providers (and others) block it.

Maeganmaelstrom

Answer 3

The view plain text option in Thunderbird actually displays the plain text copy from the Multi-part MIME. That should be fine for what you're looking to do.

Outlook actually converts the HTML version into plain text and does not show the plain text version that was delivered in the MIME.

Bottom line, just use Thunderbird.

Gunstock

Answer 4

Make sure to test your mail in both outlook 2003 and 2007.

Outlook 2003 uses Internet Explorer to render HTML mails.

Outlook 2007 uses Word to render HTML mails. It doesn't support stuff like positioning of elements, so if you heavily rely on css, outlook 2007 is going mess things up for sure.

Cologarithm

Outlook 2010 uses Word 2010, which is again slightly different than Word 2007 :( – Bissonnette

Answer 5

If you want to actually see the Text part of a multi-part email (an email sent with both an HTML version and a Text version in the same message), then I'd recommend having a look at Fastmail.fm. They have an option to show nothing but the Text part of the multipart.

If on the other hand you are looking for an email client with the worst heuristics to convert HTML to Text - then I'm going to take a guess and second Lotus Notes.

Connell

My goal is a client that will simply show the text version. I don't want it to try to convert the html for me. I'm gonna take a look at fastmail. Really the ideal would be some mobile phone email client from the old generation, but I don't have any ... – Albedo

And Yes, FastMail shows the same as Thunderbird, which seems to be the real plain text. Outlook is trying to be smart and changed my text. – Albedo

Answer 6

You could look for elm or pine on *nix - both very basic.

Birdella

Answer 7

Whenever I want to see what the message actually is (not just what it looks like) in Thunderbird, I just use the view message source option. That gives me the plain text and the HTML source.

If you just want mangled e-mail, though, Lotus Notus is highly recommended.

Danley

Answer 8

Mail on *nix. Very, VERY crappy.

Biotope