The reluctance to use HTML in email (and news groups for that matter) is astonishing! Instead people insist on using plain text and inevitably paste long links that break due to stupid clients badly wrapping the URL. For example:
Note: "^M" included to indicate where the line wrap occurs as this blog software will wrap it differently
Email clients then linkify the first part (http://gisclarifyweb.somewhere.com/eSupport/eSupportjsp/MenuSystem/CaseViewMS.j) but fail to include the second part (sp?casenum=G03519757) resulting in the link not working and making the recipient have to do the work of piecing the URL back together. And with some humongous URLs (and you've seen them) this can be quite an effort. Move this to your small cell phone in a bumping bus ride and this is next to impossible!
So this has spawned an entire industry most notably tinyurl.com and friends. But why? Why not instead simple think up a meaning few words to describe the link and make a proper anchor href. For example, the above is talking about a Clarity case number of G03519757. So that should be the link text. Viola you have G03519757. This magic is achieved in Thunderbird - my mailer of choice - simply by highlighting the link text, typing Ctrl-L for link and pasting in the proper URL (In Outlock you select Insert: Hyperlink). There! You're done. Was that that hard? You've not only made it much easier on the receiver of your email by providing a simple - and attractive - link that will not break by being wrapped by any email client capable of rendering HTML (i.e. most of them) and for any incapable, they'll see the link in all its ugly glory and improper and broken wrapping they they must be accustomed to by now anyway!
So why don't people do this regularly? I'm not sure but my guesses run neck and neck between lazy and ignorant. What's your guess?
