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Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

caniemail.com

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Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#251

Post by amluto »

dabber wrote: post #101
ryanbigg wrote: post #66

What an excellent resource! (And yes Outlook is a pain and supports so very little!) We've tried building email templates for notifications for our apps where I work, and it has typically been a pain. We have since swapped to using mjml ( https://mjml.io/ ) to build the templates, and it's working wonders. The output seems the be the most compatible with all different devices that we've tested on. The other tool we e…

mjml looks really interesting, thanks for sharing. I wish there was a business reason for orgs to care about accessable and machine readable (I guess OCR is a thing now but still) emails. I've been using Foundation for Emails[1] for the very small number of emails that I've worked on which required more than just a list of img tags, and I really appreciate it for existing because HTML emails have been stuck in ie6 we…

> I wish there was a business reason for orgs to care about accessable and machine readable

Isn’t the whole point of sending emails to get the recipient to read them? If the recipient can’t read them, you wasted that money and captured no value. Possibly negative value because you just reminded the recipient of how annoying your website is. “Oh right, that vendor with the full-page modal that I couldn’t dismiss, or was it the vendor that had a pretty site that turned gray three seconds after loading for not discernible reason and wouldn’t let me click anything after that? I’ll just shop at Amazon next time even though they’re more expensive and vaguely evil.”

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#252

Post by rakoo »

ktosobcy wrote: post #246
rakoo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's more plain-text would force to provide just a link without all the tracking garbage I'm glad that you never ever received any link to some derivation of st.es.rui.tracking/bzzz/pfrrrrt?campaign=hn that hide the real link, but in the real world, that's how tracking is done. Plain text doesn't prevent anything. > not sure if needed, besides you can attach images to plain text (though not inlining) or click-abl…

> I'm glad that you never ever received any link to some derivation of st.es.rui.tracking/bzzz/pfrrrrt?campaign=hn that hide the real link, but in the real world, that's how tracking is done. Plain text doesn't prevent anything. That's the thing - I do get lots of them. In the age of html+plain and abuse of tracking (because it's so easy to hide with html), plain text version is just littered with this nonsense... Fo…

So you're agreeing that plain text doesn't prevent tracking ? And that advocating for it won't solve the problem ?

> As for attachments - obvious exaggeration to dismiss actual issue: bravo…

No, the issue is that you can't tell everyone to "just upload the picture somewhere and put the link in the middle", that's unreasonable. That is the issue. HTML solves an issue.

> Don't assume that someone using HTML actually do it conciously or is glad to receive it in that form because average user doesn't complain about it

Average users want formatting. Plain text doesn't provide it. HTML for emails sucks, but plain text isn't a solution to that.

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#253

Post by lelanthran »

CRConrad wrote: post #250
lelanthran wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regarding 1. it's up to the client to parse and highlight links in plain text. If the client is interpreting the content and then displaying its interpretation to the user, then it's not plain text anymore, is it? It's a format; in this case it's a poorly-specified, ad-hoc format and broken format[1] that is worse than simply having a reduced ad-hoc HTML format. Just like HTML is "plain text" which is interpreted b…

> If the client is interpreting the content and then displaying its interpretation to the user, then it's not plain text anymore, is it? Yes it is. > It's a format Yes, plain text is a format. The best format. > in this case it's a poorly-specified, ad-hoc format and broken format[1] that is worse than simply having a reduced ad-hoc HTML format. Well sure, plain text sucks at being HTML. That's because it isn't HTML;…

>> For example, what if the sender types in `You should go to http://ww.example.com, where "example" must be replaced with your company name`? Suddenly `www.example.com` has an unintended DDoS!

> Ah, so that doesn't happen if the sender types in the wrong thing in HTML...?

I can't tell if you're being purposely contrarian or simply don't understand users.

The problem: Things that shouldn't be links get turned into links.

Your response: $SOME_OTHER_PROBLEM

I mean, really? You can't tell the difference between someone making a typo when intending to write a link and someone making a typo that results in a link?

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#254

Post by lelanthran »

CRConrad wrote: post #249
lelanthran wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. all links are click-able at this point; what's more plain-text would force to provide just a link without all the tracking garbage 2. you can have paragraphs and headings... it's just a matter of structure - using html you can write a wall of text just fine 3. not sure if needed, besides you can attach images to plain text (though not inlining) or click-able links to external sources (at exact place) 4. still -…

> More to the point, it's not plain text anymore if the user gets something that has been interpreted and then rendered by the software. Arguably it is. It was sent as plain text and received as plain text. The fact that the recipient's software goes through and interprets that plain text and does something when it detects an URL in it doesn't change that. If the recipient were to use some other software that doesn't…

> Arguably it is. It was sent as plain text and received as plain text. The fact that the recipient's software goes through and interprets that plain text and does something when it detects an URL in it doesn't change that. If the recipient were to use some other software that doesn't do that, they'd see... Plain text. Because that's what it is.

Exactly like .... the subset of HTML we see in emails?

I have not yet gotten an HTML email that, when displayed in plain-text, was unreadable. Neither, I suspect, have you.

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#255

Post by biziclop »

easton wrote: post #160
rjzzleep wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an excellent resource! (And yes Outlook is a pain and supports so very little!) So outlook today is the internet explorer of mail?

It literally is, Outlook for Windows uses the IE9 engine to render HTML email, IIRC. And even then not everything is supported.

Actually, it uses the Word engine for HTML rendering.

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#256

Post by Liskni_si »

palata wrote: post #239

I like plaintext better ( https://useplaintext.email/ ). And emails can totally be sent both as plaintext and HTML, so that the receiver can choose! I just don't understand why so many services only send a text/html version instead of both text/html and text/plain.

Quite a lot of services send both… and the text/plain version is completely different. They used to be the same many years ago, but then whoever is in charge of changing the email template only changes the text/html variant, and keeps the text/plain content stuck in the old times. It'd be almost funny if it wasn't tragic.

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#257

Post by palata »

Liskni_si wrote: post #256
palata wrote: post #239

I like plaintext better ( https://useplaintext.email/ ). And emails can totally be sent both as plaintext and HTML, so that the receiver can choose! I just don't understand why so many services only send a text/html version instead of both text/html and text/plain.

Quite a lot of services send both… and the text/plain version is completely different. They used to be the same many years ago, but then whoever is in charge of changing the email template only changes the text/html variant, and keeps the text/plain content stuck in the old times. It'd be almost funny if it wasn't tragic.

Agreed. But a lot of services don't even send plaintext anymore. Public services generally don't, in my country. And that's a shame.

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#258

Post by cchance »

ryanbigg wrote: post #66

What an excellent resource! (And yes Outlook is a pain and supports so very little!) We've tried building email templates for notifications for our apps where I work, and it has typically been a pain. We have since swapped to using mjml ( https://mjml.io/ ) to build the templates, and it's working wonders. The output seems the be the most compatible with all different devices that we've tested on. The other tool we e…

Holy shit all of those are awesome links, I'm working on an internal tool and i like to have clean looking notification and alert emails but its a FUCKING NIGHTMARE because everyone uses either Gmail or Outlook and both handle everything so poorly and... weirdly. And oh my god having to use tables... so many tables.

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#259

Post by flexagoon »

kome wrote: post #156
morgunkorn wrote: post #108

Hilarious anecdote about this website: the owner once said there are tons of entries in the usage log of people misunderstanding the purpose of the website and inputting celebrities names to try to email them. :D

that's a startup idea. and the answer to the "can i email...?" will be always a static page the says "no". there is money to be made here.

I know for a fact that Gabe Newell, for example, reads all emails that people send him, and even responds pretty often. So I'm pretty sure other famous people do that

Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content

#260

Post by Liskni_si »

palata wrote: post #257
Liskni_si wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of services send both… and the text/plain version is completely different. They used to be the same many years ago, but then whoever is in charge of changing the email template only changes the text/html variant, and keeps the text/plain content stuck in the old times. It'd be almost funny if it wasn't tragic.

Agreed. But a lot of services don't even send plaintext anymore. Public services generally don't, in my country. And that's a shame.

It is, although practically I don't really mind as my mutt is configured to filter text/html through elinks, so I see the content just fine. It's those other annoyances like tracking links that span a dozen lines that annoy me more. :-(
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