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Gmail, We Need to Talk

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Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#11

Post by Cakez0r »

scott_s wrote: post #4

The example presented are the kinds of emails I actively avoid. Perhaps the author is right, and Gmail is not working with them on purpose. If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features. The Schema initiative - I didn't know it was called that until now - is in the other direction, and I like it. Emails t…

I completely agree. I am totally unsympathetic about it being difficult to send consistent looking advertisements and emails that resemble web pages. If anyone from the gmail team happens to be reading, please let my comment be a contrary data point to this TC article and keep doing what you're doing!

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#12

Post by DanBC »

> Gmail and its plethora of rendering quirks is a big reason why developers avoid working on email. Developers like well-defined and documented environments, and email is anything but. Although many email clients suffer from rendering issues, getting an email to display nicely in the various Gmail desktop and mobile clients gives developers the most angst.

THANK FUCK. Seriously, just send me plain text.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#13

Post by rhino369 »

scott_s wrote: post #4

The example presented are the kinds of emails I actively avoid. Perhaps the author is right, and Gmail is not working with them on purpose. If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features. The Schema initiative - I didn't know it was called that until now - is in the other direction, and I like it. Emails t…

>If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features.

Of course it wouldn't be that Google is the world's largest advertising company and they are in direct competition with those advertisements that they break.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#14

Post by BuckRogers »

I've been wondering about this and after reading that link, I think I'm going to switch from the Gmail iOS app to using the included Mail app. We'll see how it goes, but I do want my email as the developer intended.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#15

Post by wise_young_man »

scott_s wrote: post #4

The example presented are the kinds of emails I actively avoid. Perhaps the author is right, and Gmail is not working with them on purpose. If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features. The Schema initiative - I didn't know it was called that until now - is in the other direction, and I like it. Emails t…

The article claims that Schema has not caught on, but in fact you have to be approved [1] to be able to have Gmail pick them up in emails you send and it's not really an open standard like it should be.

Moz has a great article which covers it pretty well. Basically you have to send 100 emails per day for some length of time.

Since you can't just add them to your email and expect them to work, I think that is why it hasn't caught on. I'd really love if it did though.

1: https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/registering-with-...

2: https://moz.com/blog/markup-for-emails

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#16

Post by CM30 »

Oh god, HTML email. Gmail and Outlook literally make coding these things an absolute hell due to their dreadful lack of supports for any form of standard, and the author is damn well spot on about it.

Indeed, the only good thing I can say about Gmail is that they didn't try to use the Microsoft Word engine to render HTML like Outlook did. The way HTML email is set up and the table filled soup like code that's needed to use them well is about half the reason most developers fall back to things like Mailchimp templates rather than trying to make anything half decent.

It's also why it's a real shame that the old email standards project kind of got abandoned, because absolutely zero progress has been made on this front for years upon years (outside of Apple's smartphone email apps).

And yes, while plain text email does 'work', good luck convincing a company (or your boss) to go with something basic rather than the equivalent of a glossy print brochure.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#17

Post by [deleted] »

Cakez0r wrote: post #11
scott_s wrote: post #4

The example presented are the kinds of emails I actively avoid. Perhaps the author is right, and Gmail is not working with them on purpose. If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features. The Schema initiative - I didn't know it was called that until now - is in the other direction, and I like it. Emails t…

I completely agree. I am totally unsympathetic about it being difficult to send consistent looking advertisements and emails that resemble web pages. If anyone from the gmail team happens to be reading, please let my comment be a contrary data point to this TC article and keep doing what you're doing!

[deleted]

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#18

Post by guyzero »

Gmail, we need to talk about how you make our unpopular product unpopular even with people who want to like it. We also need to talk about how to let more junk mail into people's inboxes and maybe you could just skip the whole thing about sorting important mail out from Sears flyers?

"Journalism"

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#19

Post by badloginagain »

scott_s wrote: post #4

The example presented are the kinds of emails I actively avoid. Perhaps the author is right, and Gmail is not working with them on purpose. If that is the case, it may be because many users are like me, and they tend to not want fancy-looking marketing emails, and just want basic rich-text features. The Schema initiative - I didn't know it was called that until now - is in the other direction, and I like it. Emails t…

Marketing emails are not the only ones that developers want to look not broken.

To pick an instance at random: Confirmation emails for purchases made, especially if they have tickets as an attachments. If this email looks broken, customer thinks it's phishing or something, and might end up trashing it, just because styling is not supported consistently.

And I take issue with your argument of "marketing emails are bad." You may not like them, and that's fine, but there is a large part of the internet ecosystem that do like marketing emails- such as my mother who likes learning about deals/sales/coupons at her favourite outlets.

Re: Gmail, We Need to Talk

#20

Post by newjersey »

isido wrote: post #9
LeoPanthera wrote: post #3

Maybe I am just really, really old at this point, but sending emails in plain text solves all these problems. I don't think I've ever received an HTML email that couldn't have been adequately represented in plain text and maybe an attached image if necessary.

Yeah. Sadly, plain text email seems to be endangered species. But perhaps there is still hope, markdown and pals have made some inroads as all around useful document formats.

I know this is an extreme but I like this extreme.

When I say plain text, I mean plain-text. I mean not even markdown. Just plain text. The client can choose to make links clickable if they like.

Any formatted document should come as an attachment (I'd prefer PDF). I guess it should be an attachment I expect or I probably wouldn't open it. In any case, I don't like emails with tracking. It feels forced. If you really care, send delivery and read receipt requests but I doubt we do.

Markdown should stay where it belongs. It should convert into HTML in the server, not on my client.

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