MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X • Hacker News Board

MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#1

Post by thibaut_barrere » Fri, Jan 08, 2010, 7:30 PM UTC

MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X
mocksmtpapp.com

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#2

Post by tentonova2 » Fri, Jan 08, 2010, 8:29 PM UTC

Interesting, but the problem with writing HTML e-mail is rarely real-browser testing, but rather, testing the convoluted filtering/rendering of the various webmail clients (Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail).

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#3

Post by sgruhier » Fri, Jan 08, 2010, 9:04 PM UTC

this is not the goal of mocksmtp. It's for first level testing. Checking html and correcting rendering with webkit. Then of course you need to test other mail/weblmail reader

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#4

Post by PStamatiou » Fri, Jan 08, 2010, 9:13 PM UTC

This is great! I was working on revamping the emails we send out a few weeks ago and spend a long, painful time working in terminal with tail -f development.log | grep -A 30 -B 5 Mime-Version

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#5

Post by zefhous » Fri, Jan 08, 2010, 9:14 PM UTC

tentonova2 wrote: post #2

Interesting, but the problem with writing HTML e-mail is rarely real-browser testing, but rather, testing the convoluted filtering/rendering of the various webmail clients (Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail).

It would be great if this app provided some other functionality that helps with problems like that.

For instance, MailChimp takes CSS styles and modifies your HTML by placing your CSS into inline style tags. This is great, because you can have cleaner markup but still support clients that don't apply CSS well.

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#6

Post by apinstein » Fri, Jan 08, 2010, 9:22 PM UTC

Very nice. I was thinking about writing a "web service" version of this exact idea, but this will do in the meantime!

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#7

Post by oomkiller » Fri, Jan 08, 2010, 10:31 PM UTC

Awesome! I have been looking for something like this for a long time!

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#8

Post by revetkn » Fri, Jan 08, 2010, 11:53 PM UTC

zefhous wrote: post #5

tentonova2 wrote: post #2

Interesting, but the problem with writing HTML e-mail is rarely real-browser testing, but rather, testing the convoluted filtering/rendering of the various webmail clients (Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail).

It would be great if this app provided some other functionality that helps with problems like that. For instance, MailChimp takes CSS styles and modifies your HTML by placing your CSS into inline style tags. This is great, because you can have cleaner markup but still support clients that don't apply CSS well.

Litmus will take an HTML email and run it through all sorts of mail clients, providing screenshots of how each one renders: http://litmusapp.com

(I'm not affiliated with them in any way, just found the app to be very useful while working on a recent project)

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#9

Post by jrockway » Sat, Jan 09, 2010, 1:50 AM UTC

How is this different than just sending yourself the email?

Re: MockSMTP.app - e-mail testing for Mac OS X

#10

Post by thibaut_barrere » Sat, Jan 09, 2010, 8:17 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #9

How is this different than just sending yourself the email?

If I understood well:

1/ it works offline (think git vs svn) - so you can work in a train for instance

2/ if you test your app with real data (ie: many different emails), you're sure no email will go out by mistake

3/ you can use as many recipients as you want (with any kind of address) and see the emails right away

I could be wrong though - my understanding!