Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

mailstudio.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 214 posts

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

#191

Post by tibu »

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…

Last time I check Outlook for Windows had 4% popularity among our customers and Word as render engine. Actually everything broke what other standard mail clients could handle. We had to make a lot of idiot changes because of Outlook in the content. We still have sometimes issues but if the rendering brakes we don't treat Outlook errors as blockers anymore.

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

#194

Post by grae_QED »

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…

This. Plus if you pay for stuff like mobile data and receive dozens of emails a day on your phone, these high MB emails add up. Less bloat means more money saved for me at least.

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

#195

Post by sildur »

hunter2_ wrote: post #171
tomschwiha wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Wouldn't this image rewriting mess with e-mail signing?

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

#196

Post by spurgu »

cpursley wrote: post #46
inetknght wrote: post #30

Any HTML email that arrives to my inbox is usually marked as spam and phishing. Emails need to be clear and concise. HTML facilitates far too much hidden shit.

This perspective is just as silly as turning off JavaScript in browsers.

Elaborate please.

I have Javascript off by default and only turn it on (using NoScript extension) whenever it's actually needed.

Most pages load just fine without and with those that don't it's a 50/50 between me enabling JS for it or deciding I didn't wanna view the content anyways and closing the tab.

As someone else mentioned it's not to deprive myself of functionality, but to deprive the vultures (trackers and other shady stuff) of it.

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

#197

Post by Seirdy »

cpursley wrote: post #46
inetknght wrote: post #30

Any HTML email that arrives to my inbox is usually marked as spam and phishing. Emails need to be clear and concise. HTML facilitates far too much hidden shit.

This perspective is just as silly as turning off JavaScript in browsers.

Email clients that for whatever reason allow sending HTML email typically default to sending multipart messages with a normal plain text version as well. Emails that are HTML-only are typically marketing or unsolicited noreply junk.

I normally browse with a browser that doesn't even support JS (Lynx, NetSurf, or Dillo). Glad to know that anyone who doesn't use a browser developed by a company running on billions of dollars a year is just being "silly".

If I am compelled to use a "modern" browser, I turn off JS, cookies, remote fonts, WebGL, and any third-party resources and enable them on a case-by-case basis if the website is important enough (it usually isn't). Most sites worth visiting work much better when I do this.

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

#198

Post by Seirdy »

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…

Everything you described can be done with progressive enhancement.

Only three engines exist that work well with JS; if we want our sites to not be dependent on behemoths like Google and Apple (Google is Mozilla's income source), we need to build sites that don't depend on their software (Blink, Webkit, and Gecko). That typically means not requiring JS.

People who block JS do so for good reason: when they open your site, they have no reason to believe that the JS being served isn't malware. If they disable and inspect it, they have no reason to believe that the scripts won't change the next time they open your page. It's safer to just leave it disabled.

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

#199

Post by jeroenhd »

inetknght wrote: post #30

Any HTML email that arrives to my inbox is usually marked as spam and phishing. Emails need to be clear and concise. HTML facilitates far too much hidden shit.

I think this is, aside from the security concerns, why many chat applications, forums and tools like Github/Gitlab have switched to standards like Markdown for text formatting.

I can see the value in linking, embedding images, highlighting through bold and italic text, and underlining. Even code can be useful inside an email. Markdown or a similar language would serve most people very well, much better than HTML. Non-automated and fully automated emails can do with a strong simplification.

Of course, marketing companies will always prefer full HTML because it allows for making their spam more gaudy and for making their emails follow their brand, usually through terrible abuse of tables and CSS that in the end only make emails unreadable on mobile, with dark mode enabled, or massively confuse screen readers.

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

#200

Post by Seirdy »

D13Fd wrote: post #38
inetknght wrote: post #30

Any HTML email that arrives to my inbox is usually marked as spam and phishing. Emails need to be clear and concise. HTML facilitates far too much hidden shit.

Interesting take given that they are used by millions of people every day.

"Free" antivirus software, Windows 10 telemetry, Javascript, WeChat, WhatsApp, Google Chrome, Gmail, Facebook, and countless other software choices are used by millions of people today; that doesn't mean that feeling uncomfortable conforming to the norm is unwarranted.

The millions of people you refer to probably (without realizing) send multipart messages with a plaintext version available. Emails without this are typically spam.

Post reply on HN