Standards support in email clients

It’s good to see someone campaigning for web standards support in email clients. No matter what you think of HTML emails, they’re here to stay. Clients love them - they look great and give them a wealth of metrics that many other forms of marketing simply can’t achieve. As long as they love them, they’ll keep asking for them, and, as yet, I’m not in a position to refuse the work.

The main problem I have with them is the painful process involved in building one. Standards support is so poor, this usually means nested tables, font tags and body attributes. It’s a real mental challenge - after spending the last 5 years training your brain to forget all about the bad old days, it’s really hard to go back. And, for me anyway, it’s also just feels wrong.

Anyway, I’ve no idea if Campaign Monitor will achieve anything, but good luck to them - they have my vote.

Posted 2 years, 5 months ago

We are increasingly being asked by our customers to create HTML based email campaigns. There are loads of online services that enable one to achieve this, however what really annoys me is how they are pontificate about how easy it is to create a campaign. This may be true but one needs to consider how the HTML based email will appear when reading the email via Yahoo, GMail, AOL, Hotmail and the dreaded Microsoft Outlook.

I may sound angry - I am. I have spent hours trying to ensure that a simple campaign is accessible/readable by everyone and blasted Outlook is proving really difficult. How is it that the simple solutions take the longest to complete.

Interesting article about Microsoft Outlook 2007 and what it can and won’t support when reading HTML emails:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx

PS.... Hi Phil - Long time no speak - should catch up soon.

Robert Brown · www · 2 years, 5 months ago

Yes, it’s like the bad old days of trying to cater for the quirks and capabilities of multiple browsers. A huge backward step.

Yes, we should catch up soon - I’ll drop you a line...

Phil · www · 2 years, 5 months ago

Commenting on this post has been disabled.

My name is Phil Lindsay, a web guy from Scotland, now living in Newcastle upon Tyne in England. I also run a web design company called Presence. You can email me at phil@xlab.co.uk, read more ramblings on my Twitter stream and view my photos on Flickr. You can grab the RSS feed for this weblog here.