11 Great topic kickoff

Thanks for kicking off the discussion of standards-compliant e-mail here. It’s an important topic that needs more attention for those of us who care about good design, whether readers come to our sites or we go to their e-mail folders.

HTML is as important to e-mail as it is to the Web. Remember the basics: “HT” stands for “HyperText.” Can you imagine visiting a Web site and finding all the references to other pages spelled out in URLs in plain text? Colleagues, friends and I exchange interesting links all the time via HTML e-mail.

I also have helped a few small businesses and groups send HTML e-mail newsletters, and I know from all kinds of feedback that lots of customers and members appreciate them. I’ve spent hours upon hours trying to sort out and outwit the quirks of the major e-mail clients. I can vouch for the wisdom of much the advice in this article.

I’m still learning a lot of this stuff. But it occurs to me that the key to well-designed e-mail, just as with Web pages, ought to be good structure. Use the right tags for the right purposes, and ultimately your e-mail should come out clean, clear and usable in any client. Then CSS is just the icing on the cake.

But if someone could tell me how to send an individual e-mail from Outlook XP without it screwing with the code in the HTML stationery I designed, I’d be a happy man.

posted at 09:03 pm on March 27, 2004 by Chris Williamson

12 Clients want HTML: better compliant than not

Nathan: The company for which I work sends multi-part messages, so that’s how I use this technique.

Andrew: Seeing two BODY tags isn’t the issue itself. Rather, the problem resides in the fact that if you define your BODY tag (body { margin: 0px; }) and your BODY tag no longer exists, your body aesthetics fall apart.

Bill/Nick: I understand and respect your perspective on this. However, the clients that hire my company demand HTML emails. To convince them to use plain-text instead would be as simple as moving a grazing cow from a dirt road. So at the mercy of my clients’ requests I can build compliant HTML emails with compliant CSS, or I can use FONT tags and Tables. Also, the recipients of our emails have set their preferences on whether we send to them HTML or plain-text formats. It’s not flawless, but it’s fairly accurate. Ultimately, if we have to abide by our clients’ demands, we may as well do it right if we can.

Everyone else: Thanks for the positive feedback. I’m happy to have helped.

posted at 09:42 pm on March 27, 2004 by Mark Wyner

13 Eudora Ineptitude

You may want to check out Eudora. When I took a similar quest I found that Eudora is pretty much incompetent when it comes to HTML email.

Excellent article!

posted at 11:46 pm on March 27, 2004 by Lon Baker

14 Thanks, but no thanks

I liked the article as well, but I’ll agree with Bill Humphries: no thanks for HTML emails.

I personally prefer all my emails in vanilla ASCII and so I’ve configured my all my outgoing emails (including replies to HTML emails) to be plain ascii.

In the age when more and more people are using Mobile devices to read emails, I think it’s also a good idea to stick to plain text, which creates smaller emails (=faster downloads) and is sure to display correctly on any email program. Smaller size and faster downloads also applies for regular desktop machines (hello 56k users).

As a good example, I received a HTML email the last week, where two of my colleagues had been discussing something for 3-4 emails. The size of the mail was 100k. I replied to the email, quoting it all in plain text and the size was 25k!

posted at 04:12 am on March 28, 2004 by Tommi

15 HTML mail = SPAM!

Chris Williamson wrote: “Colleagues, friends and I exchange interesting links all the time via HTML e-mail.”

My friends and I exchange interesting links too, but we don’t need HTML to do that.

What’s more, the first thought that hits me whenever I open a fresh HTML-mail: SPAM!

posted at 07:15 am on March 28, 2004 by Arduenn

16 Great, just-in-time article

Let’s get it straight: I hate HTML email like anyone of you, and frankly I don’t see what can be said with HTML email that can’t be said with plain ASCII text. However this is not about us but about our clients – they keep asking us for email campaigns with “punch” and “pizazz” and well, a job is a job, right?

This article is of particular interest for those of us who after lots of XHTML/CSS web site development, switching to tables and font tags just to please some retarded email clients feels like (and is, actually) a step backwards. And for those of us who have been through the utter frustration of having one of these work on Hotmail. Just as Mark stated above.

posted at 08:40 am on March 28, 2004 by Beto

17 ASCII stupid question...

Get stupid ANSI. ‘Nuff said.

HTML emails are evil and the bane of this world, create data wastes, bad markup, clutter mailboxes and generally FUBAR everything up.

That being said, some people NEED to use HTML email because the boss thinks it’s cool to receive emails that are 500kb and it makes him l33t to spend 5 hours downloading his emails every day. And if you want to keep your job, you listen to the boss. But the fact is you know better than him. That’s why he’s the boss. He’s paid to manage you and not know anything about what you do. Most boses don’t have the first clue about how to send “email campaigns”, they just know they’re “cool” and make money.

So this is one point I would NOT concede to my boss. Just tell him, listen, HTML emails are bad and they WILL reflect badly on the company as they will clutter the mailboxes of our prospective clients, increase their download times and put us in the same league as spammers, which EVERYONE hates. Company image is so important (unless you’re a spamming company), that usually the boss will understand and say ok. If not, explain again. And again. And again. Until he understands.

posted at 02:13 pm on March 28, 2004 by Daedlus

18 HTML e-mail is good

Maybe one of the HTML e-mail detractors here will address my first point, which is that hypertext can be just as useful to an e-mail recipient as it can be to someone browsing a Web page. Making the generalization that plain text is the only worthwhile e-mail format is like saying every Web page should display plain text.

The argument that HTML e-mail itself is evil because spammers use it is like saying HTML Web pages are bad because child pornographers or racists or terrorists use them.

And the argument that HTML e-mail is all bad because it’s often bulky and poorly coded is like saying HTML Web pages were all bad when everyone was using tables instead of CSS. Someone trying to conserve bandwidth can turn off browser graphics and make perfect sense of a well-structured Web page. It’s exactly the same for a well-structured HTML e-mail message.

HTML e-mail is more than just a necessary evil. It has as much to offer good, decent people as HTML Web pages do. Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, we should encourage development of e-mail design standards as people have done for the Web. It’s what this site is all about, yes?

posted at 03:16 pm on March 28, 2004 by Chris Williamson

19 Thanks

Good to know, but I like to avoid HTML e-mails.

posted at 05:01 pm on March 28, 2004 by Ryan

20 RE: HTML email is good

Just to respond to a couple point Chris made. Firstly, I agree that the analogy “HTML email is used by spammers hence it’s evil” is indeed flawed. But you made a very good point against yourself too. HTML Web Page WERE bad when they were all tabled. Using tables for layout is BAD, look at it as you want, it’s the wrong use of the tool. It’s like using a butterknife to take the skin off of beef in a slaughterhouse. It’s the WRONG use of the tool and should be avoided at all costs.

The point is, HTML email is bad for a couple of very simple reasons:

1) An increasing ammount of people are accessing email through cellphones and PDAs with small screens and low-bandwidth and speed. These devices need the speed and simplicity of plaintext ASCII.

2) The BASIC function of an email is to convey information from one point to another in a fast and orderly fashion. While it is true that the AMMOUNT of information has changed, it is STILL information going from one point to another. Plaintext ASCII does this just as well as HTML, the only exception is that it doesn’t have formating that is AS nice, but ASCII formating is still fine.

3) HTML is inherently larger than ASCII. Look at it as you want, HTML IS larger than ASCII. Plaintext is you content, breaks and that’s IT. HTML is you content, breaks, a whole bunch of useful markup and a whole bunch of other useless markup. If the user ends up downloading a total of 40 useless characters, that’s STILL too much. ASCII is slimmer and generally better.

4) The general audience has NO problems with ASCII emails. The general audience DOES have problems with HTML emails. Why? Viruses. Spammers. Porn. Spam. Virii. Spam. Porn. This is what they recursivly attribute HTML emails to. The fact of the matter is, you are sending this email out to THEM. You want a good impression on them. If only 10% of them know about the problems associated with HTML email, it’s STILL 10%. Nobody has ANY beef with plaintext email. So you’ll be getting 90% happy users instead of 100%. It’s not a good tradeoff if you ask me.

posted at 06:43 pm on March 28, 2004 by daedlus