One of the newest and potentially most useful wrinkles in email is the ability to enhance text with tables, columns, and other fancy formatting; with colors; withdifferentfonts; and other niftythings.

Unfortunately, we have to be careful about using these text enhancements because the various email programs don't agree on how to communicate formats and styles. Thus a message that looks really good in one email program may be less than satisfactory when read in another. The problem is more complicated when a message is addressed to several recipients, and it may be best to use no enhancements at all.

The only way to be sure of how your message will look to its recipient is to ask that recipient.  Or first send a brief test message that contains the enhancements you want to use and ask the recipient to tell you which of them he or she sees.  I keep a test message in my "Sent" folder and just send a copy of it when I need to.

Fortunately, however, it's possible to predict how certain email programs will interact.  For example, at this writing, the two popular email programs that have useful formatting and styling abilities are Netscape Communicator 4 and Eudora Pro 3.  They can each recognize some of the other's effects, but definitely not all of them.   Here's a comparison of their email enhancement capabilities:
 

• Netscape uses ONLY standard HTML commands for formatting and styling, so Netscape email looks right when viewed in a web browser or in email programs that can display HTML commands correctly.

• Eudora Pro 3 uses a proprietary system for many of its formatting and styling effects, so most other email programs ignore them.  Eudora Pro 3's text colors, for example, do not show up in Netscape.  Oddly, Eudora 3 recognizes many HTML commands, even though it doesn't use most of them in its own messages.  Most of Netscape's text formatting commands do not show up in Eudora 3, nor does Netscape's default text color setting.  (Eudora 3 Lite displays enhanced messages the same as Eudora Pro 3 does, but it can't insert enhancements in outgoing messages.)

• Eudora Pro 4 uses mostly standard HTML, but not entirely, so a few of its tricks don't work right in other email programs.  However, it can display most--but not all--standard HTML commands in messages it receives.

• Eudora 4.3 installation warning!!!  When I installed the beta version, it screwed up my Netscape user preferences file (prefs.js) so badly that Netscape's Messenger would no longer run.  I had to use a backup copy in order to get it working again.  I don't know whether the release version of Eudora 4.3 does this--but if you try it, be careful!

• Microsoft's Outlook displays standard HTML pretty well, but it inserts several non-standard codes in outgoing messages, causing them to behave oddly in other email programs, especially when Outlook messages are quoted in Netscape.  (This is typical of Microsoft applications.  Word, for example, is made to frustrate WordPerfect users.)  Outlook Express is the "lite" version of Outlook and seems to behave similarly.

• UPDATE:  Outlook messages that are quoted in Netscape Messenger look fine--until you send them or save them.  Then they get reformatted into one single paragraph.  Why?  Because Outlook uses a non-standard method to format paragraphs.  Netscape recognizes the code, but doesn't use it--so the original Outlook paragraphs collapse into one.  WORKAROUND:  Before sending or saving a Netscape message with an Outlook quotation, go through the quotation, adding hard returns between the quoted paragraphs.  Then Save your message.  That will show you how it will look when it's sent, and you can make any other changes that are needed.

• it uses only standard HTML
• it never inserts any non-standard codes into its messages
• it provides by far the best control over messages and the widest range of editing choices
• it doesn't do anything sneaky.

Netscape 4 v. Eudora Pro 3
Netscape 4 v. Eudora Pro 4
Netscape v Outlook and Outlook Express