Even if you set the bar fairly low—say at the level of the 3.x Netscape or Microsoft browsers—your postings can communicate far more effectively than if you reject HTML entirely and stick with line-oriented text. The lowest common denominator includes labeled hyperlinks, tables, font control, and attached images. In practice almost all the benefit of HTML messaging flows from the ability to use just these core features.

On some intranets, either Netscape’s or Microsoft’s browser is considered the standard. It’s not necessary to choose one, especially if you stick to the lowest common denominator. But it can be helpful. HTML authoring is new to many people. With a standard newsreader/composer—and from this perspective it doesn’t matter which kit you choose—everyone learns how to do the same things in the same ways.

It’s embarrassing to make mistakes in public, and you’re going to make mistakes until you get familiar with HTML messaging. Make liberal use of the scratch newsgroup—usually called test or junk—that most news servers provide for experimentation. If you want to, you can even cancel your trial postings after you’ve viewed them.

Both the Netscape and Microsoft address books enable you to specify the HTML preference of each recipient, as well as the default mode—HTML or plain text—used for mail messages. You can likewise set the default mode for the newsreaders, although here Collabra permits a more granular specificity. In Outlook Express, the Tools → Options → Send pane controls whether postings default to HTML or plain text. The application warns you, when the default is HTML, that people using non-HTML-capable newsreaders may find your HTML message confusing or rude. But in a multi-news-server environment, where some newsgroups may be designated by group consensus as HTML-friendly and others as plain-text-required, it’s up to you to keep track of which is which.

When might you find yourself operating in this kind of mixed environment? It happened to me at BYTE. To promote the widest participation in our public newsgroups, I discouraged use of HTML in all but one group earmarked for that purpose. In our private groups, though, HTML was the standard. Collabra goes the extra mile to support these mixed preferences. In a newsgroup’s Properties pane (highlight a group in the Message Center and then right-click → Discussion Group Properties) you can designate a newsgroup as HTML-friendly. Then, if HTML messaging is your default mode (Edit → Preferences → Mail & Groups → By default, send HTML messages), Collabra will silently transmit HTML messages to HTML-friendly newsgroups (and mail recipients) and will warn you only when you try to post HTML to a legacy newsgroup.

If a newsgroup is HTML-friendly but any mail recipient isn’t, or vice versa, you’ll be warned. In these cases, you can opt to send a compound message that includes a plain-text part and an HTML part. How gracefully the HTML degrades to plain text depends on the message. Running text that loses headline, font, and link labeling will usually survive as a useful plain-text message. Tables that get flattened into plain text, though, may turn into gibberish.

It’s hard to fault the Netscape and Microsoft implementations. Their mail and news clients are by far the most universal way to exchange rich-text messages; they’re bundled with the most widely deployed applications in the history of software; they interoperate rather well in terms of the core features that matter most. The real issue is cultural, not technical. The Internet’s roots as a line-oriented ASCII text medium run very deep, and its vast scale imbues that tradition with tremendous inertia. As users of word processors and spreadsheets, we have for years taken rich text for granted. Nevertheless, it’s a profound change in the realm of Internet-based communication, and it won’t happen overnight. Should you stake out this new territory now? Yes, when there’s a reason to do so. The last thing anyone needs is yet another silly web page bursting with gratuitous special effects. But when we collaborate online, we can all benefit from judicious use of HTML to organize and clarify the information we exchange.