Re: [CH] AOL Test

Scott Peterson (scottp4@mindspring.com)
Sun, 18 May 2003 14:35:35 -0700 

At 07:34 AM 5/17/2003 -0500, you wrote:

>>Still trying to send mail plain text on AOL.
>>Budd
>>       Syr. NY

Here are some instructions that I was given when AOL 6 first came out.  As 
far as I know work through the current version



How do I stop AOL 6 from sending HTML to the Internet?

Discussion

With the release of version 6.0 of its client software, AOL began to
embrace the
use of full HTML in email (see FAQ item 8). This included a
controversial feature
in the sending of email to the Internet, in which messages were sent
in a format
known as multipart/alternative, which uses MIME enclosures to include
two copies of
every message: one in plain text, and one in HTML. Ideally, Internet
email programs
should be designed to display the version that they understand.
HTML-compliant
programs can display the HTML section, showing the formatting that the
original
sender included with the message; while text-only programs would only
show the text
section. Even HTML-enabled programs could be made to allow their users
to choose
(or switch to) the text portion if they prefer simplicity. However,
some Internet
email programs were never designed to recognize these MIME sections,
resulting in
the recipient of such a message seeing both the plain text and HTML
versions of the
email.

Solution

When communicating with Internet recipients who are not using an email
program
capable of selecting which MIME section to view, an AOL 6.0 user can
turn off the
HTML by taking the following steps exactly as described:

1.Change your global email preferences (only needs to be done once):
a.Go to
Keyword: Preferences (or choose Preferences from the Settings menu on
the AOL 6.0
toolbar). b.Click on Font, Text, & Graphics Preferences. c.Click on
the Reset
button at the bottom of the resulting window. Do not make any changes
in the Font
Preferences area of the window. d.Click on the Save button.

2.Change a specific email to plain text (must be done for every
email): a.Compose
and address the email as desired. b.Choose Select All from the Edit
menu to
highlight the entire message. c.With the mouse arrow somewhere over
the highlighted
text, click the Right mouse button, revealing a contextual menu (AKA
Right-Click).
d.Choose Normal from the Text menu. e.Taking care not to make any
further changes
to the message, send it.

Note that changing the text to normal will eliminate the "blue bar"
quoted text
indicator, but will not remove some HTML elements of the quoted text.
The entire
quoted section must be deleted (or simply not quoted in the first
place), followed
by the re-entry of the text quoted manually, prior to changing the
text to normal.
Changing the text to normal will also eliminate any styled text that
would have
been seen by AOL recipients of the message, which cannot be re-added.
Testing also
suggests that messages with hyperlinks cannot be converted to normal
text,
requiring the prior removal of the link.

If this process is unappealing, other options include reverting to a
prior version of AOL or using AOL Mail via the web.


                          		Scott Peterson


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