Post Archive
› December 8, 2003
Do Web Standards work for Newsletters?
This may be a weird question, but are today's email applications able to handle XHTML 1.0 Strict Documents? If so, which ones? If not, what can one do to still make eligible newsletters? Does anybody know of any good write-ups about this?
Comments
1. December 8, 2003 06:00 PM
2. December 8, 2003 06:02 PM
Clemens Posted…
That is an interesting question! I don't know if it would even make sense to use xhtml in newsletters. Many people still have text only mail clients, so I usually design text only newsletters.
3. December 8, 2003 06:07 PM
Nate Posted…
Yes, but isn't there some sort of multi-part mime stuff one can do to send different versions to different clients (based on ability or prefs)? This is all crazy magical stuff I haven't been able to wrap my head around.
4. December 8, 2003 07:16 PM
James Posted…
I wonder if I should play devils advocate and mention that standards might not make sense for newsletters, your talking about html code that has a VERY short lifespan in general. So I don't think forward compability is a huge issue (though of course the other standards benefits still apply). That being said I subscribe to lockergnome, and they've recently went standards compliant. See if you can get in touch with the main guru.
p.s. Nate, I miss the URL/strong/emphasize buttons!
5. December 8, 2003 07:22 PM
Nate Posted…
That's a very good point James - also the fact that of those email clients that can display html - I think some of them do so via a pseudo browser rather than a full-fledged supporting-standards type of application. Maybe another way to look at the question is: Given the variety of email clients that can handle markup of one type or another, are there any advantages that can be taken from the web standards approach, or is it just a whole other ballgame?
6. December 8, 2003 07:50 PM
James Posted…
From what I understand of how MS renders HTML content in non-browers, it should render identical to the latest version of IE installed, however security is much tigher in the outlook preview panel. Javascript will not run for instance (I'm fairly certain).
7. December 9, 2003 04:55 AM
Joel Goldstick Posted…
There has been some on and off discussion of this in the css-d mailing list. Also, on the WIKI here: http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=StyleInEmail
8. December 9, 2003 11:51 AM
Steven Lyons Posted…
I have had some success with standards based markup for newsletters and just general email announcements. I just stick with the basics and do just a little bit of styling to make it all look good. Most of the modern email clients can handle basic style sheets, enough so that you can affect fonts, line-spacing, borders, padding, and simple positioning. The solution I came up with for those using text only clients was to comment out the text version of the email at the top with a link to visit the styled version in a browser. Then I create a lot of space then place the code for the styled email at the bottom. That way, text only users only see the text offer and never see any html.
9. December 9, 2003 03:41 PM
huphtur Posted…
Joel: thanks for the link. I guess I will have to whip out an old version of DreamWeaver to create newsletters. What a shame.
Steven: that sounds interesting, could you provide us with an example?
Nate Posted…
Wow, this is a tough subject to google on. Seems like every page out there has the word "email" in it. I'd be very interested if any of our authors or readers have experience/links to share on this.