Last updated
If you’ve ever coded an HTML email you’ll be aware that you have to throw all the things you learned at Web Standards school out of the window. Forget the following:
No really it is true. To get things working in email clients and various webmail clients you’ll need to:
This is the end of 2007 remember.
We’ve come along way with Web Standards. Microsoft listened to the community and have brought IE7 pretty much up to speed. Thank you Microsoft. But have they sorted out their email client? No they haven’t. Outlook uses the Word engine. Not even a browser engine. Microsoft are not alone though. Google falls flat on its face in Gmail and Lotus Notes is very poor. Who cares? Email Standards cares
The very people who created Campaign Monitor. HTML email is their business so it is no surprise it should be someone like them. But at last someone is standing up and shouting about something that is way behind. The blog looks like it will be a great resource for developers as well as continuing to put pressure on software and application developers to support standards.
The web community care about this. It is time that email client developers also care. The current email of Shame is:
This is not finger pointing. Email clients are way way behind. I’m really pleased the standards community has a voice for this campaign. I for one will miss the Old Skool HTML but I won’t mourn it’s passing.
Developers! Email Client Application Developers! Get involved! Let’s get standards support across email clients. We’re almost there in browsers. We can do it in email clients!
Put some pressure on. Blog about it. Talk about it. Find out more at Email Standards.
Have an update or suggestion for this article? You can edit it here and send me a pull request.