Looking for a crappy email client

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.

Thanks!

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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 ) )

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

Mail on *nix. Very, VERY crappy.

Answer 8

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.