I use plain text, and I even enable "block external image" on the client, and I would advise others to do the same, because there is just too much phishing with email..
Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
151–160 of 263 posts
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#152I thought this'd be one of those novelty sites that just say "No." in a big font.
That's usually my default answer when my design team comes to me with a request for email template updates. "No. Basic formatting only. If you are feeling frisky, tables. Nothing more"
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#153[flagged]
If you had typed half your comment into a search machine instead of the HN comment box, you would've gotten an answer.
But then I would have had to search as well.
As a rule of thumb (well, wishful thinking, I realize), if Wikipedia doesn't know it, spend a few words to introduce a term.
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> IMO, HTML was the worst thing that ever happened to email. Plain text content is the best content. Your first statement might be true (it's debatable). Your second is definitely false. Lets assume that HTML really was the worst thing that ever happened to email. Plain text content for email is still not the best content. People want to: 1. Click on a link in the email, not fumble with copy and paste on their phone.…
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 - ea…
> 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 - easily do-able; it's a matter of particular editor tracking lists - for markdown editors it works just fine and in the end you virtually have a "plain text bullet list"... magic.
I think this comment displays the problems with plain text. I really couldn't have provided a better example.
As regards the counterpoints:
1. All links are clickable
Yes, and that's a bug. "http://www.example.com" should not be a clickable line. 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.
2. It's not obvious how this should be done, and how it should reflow. You yourself failed to manage this in your reply, which I consider a good argument for why plain text is a poor UI.
3. Who cares whether you need it or not. The reality is that the clear majority of people use it!
4. Once again, if we're talking about a specific format that gets rendered into something readable, then it's not plain text anymore.
I'm arguing against the GPs assertion that plain text is the best format, not that markdown is insufficient.
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#155What 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 assume most email client support email with both html and txt content. If they don't support html or configured not to display it, the txt version is displayed.
We have a html and txt template for each email we send. It's not exactly double the work, but it's appreciated by some of our customers.
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#156Hilarious 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.
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#157I think it would be more useful to list the few CSS properties that all email clients do recognize. I don't mean to be flippant. I'm serious. CanIEmail? The answer is generally no.
If you go to this page: https://www.caniemail.com/clients/
and select "check all", it'll show you the features that are supported by all the email clients, and separately, which features have mixed support.
These appear to be the few features supported by all clients:
- border-collapse
- font shorthand
- list-style-type
- cm unit
- em unit
- ex unit
- in unit
- mm unit
- pc unit
- % unit
- pt unit
- px unit
- vertical-align
- element
- element
- to elements
- element
- element
-
element
-
element- element
- element
- element
- valign attribute
- JPG image format
- PNG image format
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#158Tuta.com not here :(
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#159What 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…
> What an excellent resource! (And yes Outlook is a pain and supports so very little!)
So outlook today is the internet explorer of mail?
Re: Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
#160What 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…
> 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.