You’ve got standardised mail
HTML vs text email is a debate that has been happening for as long as most can remember.
I came across a post on the Brightspark Blog last week linking to The Email Standards Project, something I was thrilled to hear about.
The Email Standards Project is about working with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.
A couple of months back this probably wouldn’t have meant much to me but a good mate of mine has recently had his heart broken and rebroken trying to get his client’s e-zine to render correctly in as many email clients as possible.
It’s one of the most frustrating things to develop for cross browser compatibility, it’s almost impossible to get you’re design to render 100% across all email clients, without sacrificing you’re beloved layout that is.
The email standards project has tested the dominant email clients and information on supported and non-supported CSS elements are all available from their Web site. It’s a valuable resource for designers and an initiative that will see us all emailing more happily into the future.
10 Responses to “You’ve got standardised mail”
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I used to teach English to a guy who was in charge of the newsletter for a large Italian publisher and he was constantly struggling with it.
On a sidenote your page title looks completely b0rked
Cheers for the title spot, that’s pretty odd…
Paddy looks like WYSIWYG editor was adding some extra char on page title
Not anymore though.
Sidenote 2: URL to standards site is missing a ‘p’ in the ‘http’.
Thanks Peter, the link’s patched up.
Kamrul, wordpress wouldn’t be the same without you!
Cheers Paddy for bringing this to everyone’s attention. With email templates we’re stuck in 1999 in terms of design, but can I draw your attention also to a similar issue in relation to the use of Flash on kiosks, and large screens?
Adobe has a clause in its T&C’s that says that you are breaking the terms of your license if you use Flash on kiosks or other electronic devices … It seems that you’re OK if you’re using a very old version of Flash… more info is here: http://screenmedia.wordpress.com/2007/06/12/arrrrr-ye-scurvy-flash-pirating-dogs/
So once again, it’s looking like we’re being forced to unlearn and un-use newer versions of Flash in order to be compliant.
Anyone got any thoughts on this? How to get around it? I’d love to know.
I had a look at that, I’m not too sure, I know director was more commonly used for kiosks and such but has been disbanded now. I don’t know what prerogative Adobe would have to restrict the use of Flash either, I’d assume there would be a licence to allow it to be used that way but I haven’t been able to find anything on it…
I contacted Adobe, but I’m not awaiting a reply anytime soon!
Me too… I don’t think Adobe knows what they want to do… sounds to me like someone *bright* came up with this clause and has since left the company!!
I found out the liscense restriction only applies to free Adobe web player, developers need the Macromedia Flash Player SDK (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/faq/#item-3-4) which is now Adobe Flash Lite 3 (http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer_sdk/).
Cheers for the info Kamrul!
Thanks Paddy and Kamrul… good to know.