HTML EMails
I have always had a backwards view of HTML based email. I say it is backwards because I have felt it was just for spam. Recently I have really started noticing some great benefits of using HTML in the email space. It provides a great way to brand yourself, as well as a a way to consistently show the information you need. A great example of this is how facebook and progressive use HTML emails for their notification systems.
Starting with our July roll out of LANDesk to students I have created a simple HTML email template for the HUB. It was a massive learning experience. Well, it was more like relearning everything I learned in the late 90's about web development. Email clients have no standards when it comes to HTML and for the most part don't know anything beyond very basic HTML 4. Forget divs, floats and almost any other modern HTML layout. You are pretty much stuck with a table based layout.
I have no clue how to even start using table based layouts anymore. Luckily there are some really great HTML email templates out there on the web. I used one from http://www.campaignmonitor.com and made it a little bit closer to the HUB's image.
I would love some feedback or comments regarding the design, HTML emails in general or whatever. Any help would be appreciated.
June 9th, 2010 - 16:44
Let me start off by saying the design you are going with looks great. It would be a fantastic actual web page.
That said, I hate HTML emails. No matter what the folks at Sitepoint use to justify HTML email, it’s still a horribly used feature. I view all of my (personal) email in a web browser because I use GMail, and these things _still_ don’t work right.
Very rarely I will send a rich text email. I usually only have to send those when I am writing up a business proposal or memo type email. That’s what “HTML email” was invented for, and that’s where it works best (e.g. limiting the markup to font weights, sizes, colors, etc.).