On Fri, 12 May 2000 09:33:02 CDT, John Kristoff <jtk(_at_)depaul(_dot_)edu>
said:
John Stracke wrote:
Well, there's basic formatting:
[...]
And even simple links (never mind forms, applets, etc.) are great for,
say, workflow applications. When I worked for Netscape, HR made great
use of HTML mail in the internal network. When I wanted to take some
Email is not the web.
On the other hand, e-mail does a MUCH better job of some things than the web
does. In particular, if you do workflow via e-mail (especially with PGP or
other authentication/encryption), you can send the object to the next person
that needs it, and *NOT* expose it to the rest of the world.
If you do it web-based, you then have all the ugly issues of getting it onto
the webserver, setting access controls on it so that only the intended person
can get at it, etc etc etc.
Incidentally, this is exactly the same issue as "attach a file to an e-mail"
versus "send the recipient a note, copy the file to a ftp/web server, wait
for him to retrieve it, and then remember to clean it up afterwards".
Let's face it guys - unless we collectively come up with a better way to
do it, there's going to be a continued push towards having more "push" style
interaction via e-mail. RFC1440 (Sender-Initiated File Transfer) appears
to be essentially dead, and no new contenders have arrived....
--
Valdis Kletnieks
Operating Systems Analyst
Virginia Tech