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HTML Email???

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 1:25 pm
by alex.barylski
I've looked into the source of a few emails which I receive. It doesn't appear any of them use external stylehseets. Are external styles supported in HTML email, was this just lazy designing on their behalf?

I'm using the openWYSIWYG editor to create emails from a web based application. Unfortunately with it's easy to follow code, comes a horrible XHTML engine. It uses <font> tags, etc...

When I send email, they will come as both HTML/TEXT or both depending on user settings...

Because of the text only version, is accessible/compliant XHTML as important as say with web pages? Most WYSIWYG editors I have tested are equally horrible at supporting true XHTML (XStandard being the exception but requiring an ActiveX) - they just force or attempt to convert IE's horrible HTML into XHTML compliant code.

Anyways, back to my email question. May I assume that HTML email allows any/all the HTML I would expect in a web page? This means using external stylesheets located on a server?

Re: HTML Email???

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 1:50 pm
by John Cartwright
Hockey wrote:I've looked into the source of a few emails which I receive. It doesn't appear any of them use external stylehseets. Are external styles supported in HTML email, was this just lazy designing on their behalf?
You can include anything you want to include in emails.. whether the client will block the request is another question. Typically, emails that requre external http calls, the client will
a) Confirm that the email has permission to make the external http call
b) Simply ignore it

I would be baffled if I saw an email client that allowed external calls by default or without the consent of the user.. think about the spam implications. Traditionally invisible email tracking was done through images (or 1x1 images) that make external http calls to identify and track the email. Which brings me back to my point that you should avoid external http calls if you can.

Re: HTML Email???

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:13 pm
by Oren
Hockey wrote:was this just lazy designing on their behalf?
No, it wasn't. You'll shortly find out how poor HTML support in emails is... and I don't even want to get into CSS (don't even tell this word to your email client!).
Go to SitePoint and search for "HTML email" and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 3:02 pm
by alex.barylski
External CSS would be ignored wouldn't it...

Shoot. Thats why they likely do the whole inline thing. I notice most use external images though...in fact I haven't seen many (if any) newsletter which used inline images (which I believe is possible - doesn't SwiftMailer implement something like this?).

Problem is, this is a hosted newsletter service and bandwidth I'm paying for...so perhaps I could implement inlined images for an additional cost. Charge for the size of the email sent * subscribers...rather than a fixed price or $10/month for 1000 subscribers...

All of those services are so sketchy/shady...so I want to avoid that it's exactly why I started development of my own.

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 6:10 pm
by matthijs
HTML email is horror. I had to learn tables and font stuff when I did my first one ...

Just style everything inline.

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:34 pm
by Chris Corbyn
I agree that HTML support in mail clients is sucky at best. But then Mail clients are not web browsers (no JS for one thing!). Remote CSS works in some browsers from what I remember, but it's a hairy area fundamentally... Having anything remotely linked allows spammers to phish details about their readers.

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:44 pm
by alex.barylski
In a way this is a mixed blessing. :P

On one hand, the WYSIWYG I'm using (openWYSIWYG) has the worst support for CSS styled HTML (still uses <font>). On the other, it makes emails bulky and harder on bandwidth, which I'll be paying for. :)

Chris, does SwiftMailer support embedded images? How does that work, are images simply added to the email as attachments or are they stored somewhere else in the email? Am I smoking drugs and this isn't even possible? :D

Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:25 am
by volka
There is a page "Embedding images in HTML E-mails" in the swiftmailer docs.

Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2007 7:43 pm
by alex.barylski
volka wrote:There is a page "Embedding images in HTML E-mails" in the swiftmailer docs.
I'll look into it eventually as I plan on using Swift for my application sending engine...assuming it out performs comparable libraries like PHPMailer??? :P

And I can use it in a commercial, hosted application. :)

Anyways, I will shortly be reading up on all that Swift Mailer has to offer...

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 10:21 am
by RobertGonzalez
Swift kicks anything that currently exists @$$. In my opinion it is the best mailing library there is.

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:54 pm
by alex.barylski
Everah wrote:Swift kicks anything that currently exists @$$. In my opinion it is the best mailing library there is.
I've kept an eye on the library and it's progress...seems most promising. I especially like how CC is a forward thinker & always asking questions and trying to improve his craft and his library. :D

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:31 pm
by Luke
Outlook (last I heard) uses microsoft word as its html parser instead of ie... which is ridiculous, but I guess they want office ladies to be able to create their emails in Word :roll:

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:36 pm
by s.dot
Microsoft Word HTML is the most horrible thing I've ever seen!

Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:41 pm
by RobertGonzalez
Outlook is just another one of those MS POS apps. In my opinion.

But, I digress. Swift rocks.