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WilliamEdward | 5 years ago

Email doesn't naturally involve the web? What?

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yliu|5 years ago

Ray Tomlinson's design for email came in the 70s. RFC 788 (SMTP) was published in 1981.

Email predates the Web, and, imo, has been made much worse by all the Web-adjacent features shoved into it.

PNWChris|5 years ago

I believe they’re referring to the web as port 80/443 http(s) traffic. It’s the old World Wide Web vs internet distinction, if you will.

Email really is just a protocol for message sending, and it lives on it’s own port with its own server. If you have an email client and access to an email server (POP/SMTP/however), you can use email over the internet but without the “web”.

Basically, the web email client ought not be the only email client.

WilliamEdward|5 years ago

It was the ambiguity of the word 'web' that tripped me up. You still need a network of computers for email to be useful.

goatlover|5 years ago

Nope, different protocols. You don't need web browsers for email, and the email clients that run in web browsers are using mail servers to send and receive.

If the web didn't exist, which it didn't prior to 1991, email would still work fine. There just wouldn't be any web-based email clients.

rpeden|5 years ago

Email over ARPANET and the internet predates the web by a couple of decades.

The way we use email hasn't really changed that much since the 70s.