The ASCII ribbon campaign was an Internet phenomenon started in 1998 advocating that e-mail be sent only in plain text, because of inefficiencies or dangers of using HTML e-mail. Proponents placed ASCII art in their signature blocks, meant to look like an awareness ribbon, along with a message or link to an advocacy site:
() ascii ribbon campaign - against HTML e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments
_
ASCII ribbon campaign ( )
against HTML e-mail X
/ \
/"\ \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign X against HTML e-mail / \ |
Contents |
Following the development of Microsoft Windows 95, certain people became annoyed that they were receiving email in HTML and other non-human-readable formats. Sally Hambridge of the Intel Corporation wrote in the RFC 1855 entitled "Netiquette Guidelines" dated October 1995: "Do not include control characters or non-ASCII attachments in email messages". The first known appearance of a ribbon in support of the campaign was in the signature of an email dated 17 June 1998 by Mauricio Teixeira of Brazil.[1]