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Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

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Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#171

Post by hunter2_ »

tomschwiha wrote: post #149
ncallaway wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that is exactly why Google provides a proxy for that.

Last time I checked Google is proxying the external ressources right in the moment when the email is opened, so it just protects the IP address.

Someone tested [0] and the result agrees with you. And this Gmail help article [1] elaborates on the scope of protection, which is equivalent to "IP address and HTTP headers":

> Google scans images for signs of suspicious content before you receive them.

> These scans make images safer because:

> - Senders can’t use image loading to get information about your computer or location.

> - Senders can't use the image to set or read cookies in your browser.

> - Gmail checks the images for known harmful software. Sometimes, senders may know whether you've opened an email that has an image. Gmail scans every message for suspicious content. If Gmail thinks that a sender or message is suspicious, images aren’t shown and you’ll be asked if you want to see the images.".

###

Personally, I think this is quite silly, because I routinely disclose my IP address and HTTP headers without considering it particularly sensitive, but I don't want senders to know that their their email messages have been opened.

[0] https://blog.filippo.io/how-the-new-gmail-image-proxy-works-...

[1] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/145919?hl=en-GB

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#172

Post by citrin_ru »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #159
citrin_ru wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spammers sometimes (often enough to bother) are trying to fool spam filters by adding invisible or hard to see text copied from ham messages (e. g. it allows to bypass Bayes). To counter this spamfilters are trying detect and penalize invisible text in HTML emails e. g. .... , display:none, text with the same color as background, e. t. c. Running something like headless browser (Chrome) to parse HTML emails would req…

Ironically is a must for spacing tables if you want outlook compatibility.

Ironically this technique was used in phishing for MS Office 365 credentials (users of which often use MS Outlook): https://www.avanan.com/blog/zerofont-phishing-attack

Rendering in Outlooks changes from time to time - it is worth to check if this workaround is still required.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#173

Post by zwaps »

lucideer wrote: post #138
zwaps wrote: post #73

I receive a lot of newsletters and communiqués, some of which I even signed up for. So, I don't know what designers use to receive e-mail, but here in the non-designer / non-linux world, Outlook is pretty popular. Now, Outlook - at least all configurations I have seen, has pictures via HTML disabled. I have sampled a few IT departments only, of course, but I feel like this is probably a pretty common policy. So let m…

Outlook is probably the most common desktop client, but I think most people (even in corporate settings) are using webmail these days; either Google Apps Suite or Office 365. The former at least displays images by default (Google re-hosts them and rewrites the email source). Not sure if MS does the same.

It probably depends on the industry.

Some of the biggest companies in Europe use Outlook the desktop client, with said external resources disabled.

May differ in technically more advanced countries, of course.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#174

Post by zwaps »

rhines wrote: post #160
zwaps wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is turning off javascript silly? Not that I personally disable all JS in my browser, but I'd say if your website can not be displayed without Javascript, then it is silly.

At one point I might have agreed with you, but after working on a few sites of my own I found that Javascript just enables a vastly better user experience. No need to refresh the page every time the user does something like liking a post or sending a comment, can load content more seamlessly with pre-loading or lazy loading, enables expandable menu bars to maximize space for content when the menu's not in use, things…

Like you can probably guess, people tend to disable JS not because it can technically enable a good user experience.

Rather, they do so because it enables a majority of websites, and this includes big names like news websites, to create an absolutely horrible user experience - even if, or seemingly because, the content profits in no way from JS.

If you have ever tried to surf on an older laptop recently, you will get what I mean.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#175

Post by WrathOfJay »

dijit wrote: post #144
zwaps wrote: post #73

I receive a lot of newsletters and communiqués, some of which I even signed up for. So, I don't know what designers use to receive e-mail, but here in the non-designer / non-linux world, Outlook is pretty popular. Now, Outlook - at least all configurations I have seen, has pictures via HTML disabled. I have sampled a few IT departments only, of course, but I feel like this is probably a pretty common policy. So let m…

I always assumed this was intentionally done this way so that people click the “display external content” warning and inadvertently activate the tracking pixels.

IIRC, that was the exact argument for disabling image loading when it was first introduced.

The responsible thing for services like gmail and o365 to do would be to eat the resource costs and just open ALL external content within a privacy sandbox, thereby polluting the data. Then you can re-enable displaying of images for everyone and the experience for designers and end users gets better.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#176

Post by zwaps »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #129
zwaps wrote: post #73

I receive a lot of newsletters and communiqués, some of which I even signed up for. So, I don't know what designers use to receive e-mail, but here in the non-designer / non-linux world, Outlook is pretty popular. Now, Outlook - at least all configurations I have seen, has pictures via HTML disabled. I have sampled a few IT departments only, of course, but I feel like this is probably a pretty common policy. So let m…

Here we have a newsletter which is wholly one big raster screenshot without any fancy html and no trace of text.

Heh, I get those.

It comes to me as an empty bevel box and an unsubscribe link.

That’s what I call succinct!

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#177

Post by hunter2_ »

arendtio wrote: post #122
zwaps wrote: post #73

I receive a lot of newsletters and communiqués, some of which I even signed up for. So, I don't know what designers use to receive e-mail, but here in the non-designer / non-linux world, Outlook is pretty popular. Now, Outlook - at least all configurations I have seen, has pictures via HTML disabled. I have sampled a few IT departments only, of course, but I feel like this is probably a pretty common policy. So let m…

To be precise: it is not like pictures are disable, but instead 'external resources' are disabled. So if you embed the picture into the e-mail it will be shown. For small pictures that is quite reasonable.

Ding ding ding. As a sender, the upside is that virtually all GUI users will see the images without prompts or placeholders; the downside is that you don't get a read receipt. As a (GUI user) recipient, the upside is that you will see the images without prompts or placeholders while preserving your privacy; the downside is that you hit your storage quota way sooner.

Technically, embedded images are a lot like attachments, but mail clients are smart enough not to display the little has-attachment paper clip download widget because the MIME headers for the image will say "Content-disposition: inline" instead of "Content-disposition: attachment". Then the HTML img element references it using the cid: scheme instead of the https: scheme or similar. Anyway, the experience is great.

I suspect Mail Studio doesn't offer this because its MO is that "Designs are exported as standard HTML and can be imported in your email marketing platform of choice." This embedded image technique would require that Mail Studio export (or send) the entire multipart MIME message, not just the HTML part.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#178

Post by Aeolun »

lucideer wrote: post #138
zwaps wrote: post #73

I receive a lot of newsletters and communiqués, some of which I even signed up for. So, I don't know what designers use to receive e-mail, but here in the non-designer / non-linux world, Outlook is pretty popular. Now, Outlook - at least all configurations I have seen, has pictures via HTML disabled. I have sampled a few IT departments only, of course, but I feel like this is probably a pretty common policy. So let m…

Outlook is probably the most common desktop client, but I think most people (even in corporate settings) are using webmail these days; either Google Apps Suite or Office 365. The former at least displays images by default (Google re-hosts them and rewrites the email source). Not sure if MS does the same.

Webmail is actually better thN the desktop client, but I have to remember to keep it in the background.

A desktop client with a thin wrapper around the websinterface would be best.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#179

Post by megablast »

lucideer wrote: post #138
zwaps wrote: post #73

I receive a lot of newsletters and communiqués, some of which I even signed up for. So, I don't know what designers use to receive e-mail, but here in the non-designer / non-linux world, Outlook is pretty popular. Now, Outlook - at least all configurations I have seen, has pictures via HTML disabled. I have sampled a few IT departments only, of course, but I feel like this is probably a pretty common policy. So let m…

Outlook is probably the most common desktop client, but I think most people (even in corporate settings) are using webmail these days; either Google Apps Suite or Office 365. The former at least displays images by default (Google re-hosts them and rewrites the email source). Not sure if MS does the same.

Nope - https://emailclientmarketshare.com/

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#180

Post by jasonfarnon »

ncallaway wrote: post #148
incrudible wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because if it's a one time fee, there will be no recurring income and the developer will have to stop development. Here's a crazy idea in 2020: That's totally fine. There's a point where adding more features becomes a negative ROI. That's when you know you need to move on solving a different problem . That's the alternative.

The problem in 2021 (and 2022 and 2023, etc) is that the app will break over time. OS updates will break a small piece of functionality. Critical security vulnerabilities will be discovered that need to be patched. If the developer abandons the application because it isn't earning new revenue, the application will eventually degrade over time. I don't have a good answer here, because I also don't like the SASS billin…

You think those issues began in 2021?
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