Here's just a small, tiny fraction of the information that goes into putting out this ezine. Probably most everyone knows this except me, but I thought I would include this just in case I'm wrong about something, or in case this is new to anyone else.

There's two distinct parts to Trade-Jacker: the e-zine and tthe website. The e-zine is written in plain text, the website is written in HTML. I originally spent a month trying to figure out how to send out an HTML email newsletter, like the kind MoveOn or the Family Research Council send out. I wanted some color, and some pictures to illustrate concepts. I finally found an e-zine format that I liked.

In order to send and receive the HTML email newsletter, I had to configure and understand my email server, and enable it to write in and send HTML, as opposed to plain text. Then, after I "perfected" the newsletter, I came across a website claiming to list all the reasons why HTML emails are evil. I then decided to scrap the whole HTML e-zine and write a simple plain text newsletter, which we would archive on our website in HTML. So, if you're receiving the e-zine, you?re reading boring old plain text, which is actually not so bad. But, if you're browsing the internet and you're on our website, everything you're seeing is written using HTML, and possibly some Java Scripting (I know many people hate Java Script, but I'm just learning all this stuff, so cut us a little slack, or write to us to educate us).

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. While the "L" stands for "language", HTML is not a computer language: just the plain old language of English. You can write HTML documents using simple text writers such as the notepad for PCs. If you"ve only used MSWord, or WordPerfect, these are just fancy programs for writing your life story or whatever. If you want to write out script for a computer program, or if you want to write text that will be read by an internet browser to reveal a webpage, its easiest to just pull up the simpler Notepad, Wordpad, or, if you"re using a MAC, Simple Text. If you're using a PC, your notepad is located in Start>Programs>Accessories>Notepad.

If you want to know what this exact webpage looked like when I wrote it in my Notepad, select View>Source. Or, you can right-click on the screen and choose view source. With little to no knowledge of how to write HTML, you can copy and paste the source of web pages you like into HTML writing programs like FrontPage, or FrontPage Express. FrontPage Express is available for free on the internet. I used it to write and edit all of the documents on the Trade-Jacker website. But even more simple, you can copy and paste one of those sources, rewrite some of the text in the Notepad document, and open it up using your browser. Even if you're not connected to the internet, open up your browser, choose File>Open and then open up your Notepad document that you rewrote.

So, why am I not sending an HTML e-zine? Instead of rewriting this stuff in my own words, I'm just going to plagerize:

The 7 sins

1. HTML e-mail is dangerous
Nearly all viruses are transmitted by email. Both plain text and HTML mail may carry malware attachments but with HTML there is a significantly greater risk since some malware can exploit vulnerabilities in the HTML parser to automatically execute code as soon as the message is viewed in the preview pane (i.e. without the attachment having to be 'opened'.)

2. HTML e-mail wastes bandwidth

Look at the source code of any HTML message and after the headers you'll see the message body is duplicated, once in plain text and once in HTML. So most HTML messages are at least twice as big as plain text only, and they can be many time larger.

3. HTML e-mail doesn't always work

Some popular e-mail readers (e.g. Pegasus) simply don't read HTML mail, others (Pocomail and even AOL) have difficulties displaying it properly.

4. HTML e-mail can connect to the internet by itself

If you're off-line, opening an HTML email cantaining images may (by default) open a connection to the internet.

5. HTML e-mail renders slowly

Some mail apps (e.g. Outlook) can slow down considerably when rendering HTML. The need for an HTML parser has also led to code-bloat in email apps generally.

6. HTML e-mail is not always reader-friendly

HTML allows the sender to use unreadably small or non-standard fonts, clashing colours, badly formatted images and sometimes there is no quick or easy way for the reader to adjust the appearance to THEIR choice.

7. Digested lists hate HTML mail

Subscriber lists, particularly those with a digest, discourage and sometimes block HTML (since it appears in the digest as a mess of code).