Does anyone actually use HTML 3.2 when creating HTML emails?
3.2 is so limiting. Text links are a pain to format and you can not even specify leading!
A HTML email in 3.2 is going to look awful.
I’ve just checked the last three HTML emails I’ve received and two are 4.01 Transitional and one is XHTML 1.0 Transitional. They look great and work well (on my Mac).
If I keep my email simple, can I use 4.01? What are the pitfalls?
If you want your mail messages to look exactly the same on all mail
platforms, then you have to aim at the lowest common denominator –
Outlook on the PC. In a widely-reviled attempt to curtail spam and
viruses (duh – it’s running under Windows – that’s your problem
right there…) Microsoft decided a few years ago to replace the IE
HTML engine with the one from MS Word. Hello, 1997! Can I get a
flannel shirt to go with those clunky boots, too?
Modern (that is to say Mac and Linux) e-mail clients, or Gmail in a
browser, or any iPhone, can read and display HTML mail at pretty much
any code level. But if you want to have the message look like
something people will read and click on in any e-mail client, you have
to either burn the entire message into a single image (and look like
90% of the spam I get) or you have to get funky with the HTML 3.2.
Or you can do what I do and always send text-only mail. Hello, 1994!
Is that a 300-baud modem?
Walter
On Oct 6, 2010, at 6:07 AM, Mark wrote:
Does anyone actually use HTML 3.2 when creating HTML emails?
3.2 is so limiting. Text links are a pain to format and you can not
even specify leading!
A HTML email in 3.2 is going to look awful.
I’ve just checked the last three HTML emails I’ve received and two
are 4.01 Transitional and one is XHTML 1.0 Transitional. They look
great and work well (on my Mac).
If I keep my email simple, can I use 4.01? What are the pitfalls?
Not necessarily true that 3.2 is the way to go. I could see how a 3.2 setting would make sense to guard you from including things that don’t work, but again it’s not necessary as I have sent out HTML emails using XHTML 1.0 transitional and things looked fine in Outlook. I could even use leading!
It’s more the way in which you build your email using tables versus having a proper document type.
Thought so. I’m plowing ahead with HTML 4.01 Strict. Once it’s designed I’ll use MailChimp to check it works in various email apps.
You might be able to help me. I’ve posted another topic… but in a sentence or two…
I’ve created my email newsletter in FW. Uploaded it and it all looks fine. I’ve then gone back to the file and applied the Create Email Action. Re-uploaded the file and one of the font styles has gone weird. See
The text at the very top about viewing in a browser and the text at the very bottom about unsubscribing should be Helvetica 11px. But it appears as a large serif font!
But if I remove the Email Action it all appears as it should.
I’ve changed my weekly Newsletter for my clients to 4.01.
BUT: A good looking NL on Macintosh looks horrible on
Windows. Check it out here, how different they render: