Optimizing CSS presentation in HTML emails
In Optimizing CSS presentation in HTML emails, Mark Wyner explains how you can use CSS to improve the markup of HTML emails.
This is a bit of a dilemma for me. I personally hate getting HTML-based emails, but I haven’t been able to make my co-workers or clients feel the same. Hence I sometimes need to create, or assist in creating, HTML emails.
That’s why I find this article interesting. If you need to do something you don’t agree with, you might as well do what you can to make the best of it.
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Comments
My two cents: I do not like to receive HTML e-mails, either (and I do not even want look at the code anymore).
One of the most frustrating chapters of my professional career was to work as a consultant for a company doing e-marketing and e-mail promotion business. I actually had to write HTML e-mails, huh. What a mess… if you needed the e-mails to show up correctly in Lotus Notes, for example, even HTML 3.2 was not sufficient. Go figure.
So, plain text is the best e-mail format ever. lol.
I personally hate HTML-Emails as well but how do I explain to a computer novice why he shouldn’t write HTML emails? A friend of mine has just bought a computer and is making his first steps, including writing emails but how can I really convince him that it is bad to write HTML emails?
By the way: Is it possible to switch off HTML rendering in Apple Mail?
I find it very difficult to convince people not to use HTML in email. What you can do is send multipart messages to make sure any HTML email also contains a text version.
Switching of HTML rendering in Apple Mail used to be possible with a bit of hacking. Upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4 broke that, and I haven’t been able to disable HTML rendering in the latest version.
After Googling a bit I found a way of specifying a minimum font size in a thread at Macosxhints: Use a local stylesheet to control Mail.app HTML. The comment that contains the solution is labeled “Solution for small fonts in Tiger Mail, finally!”. Better than nothing I suppose.
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