HTML Mails

Freeway
1

Good morning,

I struggle for many months now to create html mails.
I make the mail content itself in Freeway of course and then, I open that page in Safari and copy the source code. That code I the paste in a bulk mail program, Bulkmailer our direct mail.
But until now, the outcome is never ok ! The mail layout is not what it looked like in Freeway !!
I wonder how apple does that? do they place the source itself on a server our what…I don’t know?

Anybody here whit some experience on this matter? Any help would be greatly appreciated !

Thx

Johny

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2

There is a Tutorial here that Max did for use with Mail. The principal is the same for all email programs.

http://www.freewaytalk.net/thread/view/11325

D

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3

And at SP Towers

http://www.softpress.com/kb/article.php?id=049

D

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4

I sympathise with Johny.
While the method outlined using Freeway and Safari works, it fails when the email is ‘forward’ on. The layout breaks down into elements.
And yet there are html emails that can be forwarded on without losing the layout.
Reach for another glass of red.
Cheers, Rob

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5

That’s exactly what I mean Rob, and what’s worse, I need it for my business. My guess is that it has something to do with building the site with Freeway. By the way, Freeway sends occasionally html e-mails out. How do they do that ?

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6

I create a monthly newsletter for a client that is HTML and is sent
out to the client’s subscriber list - in FW. One thing you must
realize is that you have to design for the least common denominator:
use a table with your images sliced in PSD and placed into the table
cells, no external CSS, no layers, etc.

Also, if you are not using a service like Campaign Monitor - which I
and my clients do - http://www.campaignmonitor.com, and you want to
send your newsletters from your own email application (HIGHLY NON-
RECOMMENDED, BTW) you need to change your image links to absolute,
full paths - something not easily done. Yes, there is an action but I
found that it didn’t work with the clear_gifs that FW generates and
so in the end I used the action and then had to go in and modify the
code off the server with BBEdit - which was a huge PITA.

Creating and sending HTML emails is not going to get any easier,
either. Microsoft recently said that Outlook, the email client used
most PC users - will be using the HTML rendering/coding that Word
uses! Yes, cringe my friends! CRINGE! ALL of us know of the horrors
of pasting text copied form Word into a FW doc! So, while the rest of
us move towards standards, Microsoft is once again, going their own
way… sigh. Seriously, Microsoft should be sued and forced to comply
with the standards!

I personally, love going to Vegas - it’s one of my favourite
destinations. Not necessarily to gamble - though I do throw a “half-
stack” into those shiny, shiny, slots - but more to be amongst the
glitter and eat at some truly fantastic restaurants. Creating HTML
Emails is like being in Vegas everyday! Sometimes you get lucky but
generally you aren’t.

Best Regards,
James Wilkinson

Print and Web Design Services
Visit: http://www.dzynlab.com

Website Hosting Services
Visit: http://www.have-host.com

On 2-Dec-07, at 9:31 AM, johnyw wrote:

That’s exactly what I mean Rob, and what’s worse, I need it for my
business. My guess is that it has something to do with building the
site with Freeway. By the way, Freeway sends occasionally html e-
mails out. How do they do that ?

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7

I use a nice simple program called “mailings” which does a nice job
of linking my freeway generated newsletter (on my site) to an address
list group in my address book. Works well after you adjust all the
settings. It also forces a relink of each email sent to the webpage
and generally they arrive they way I intend them to. There’s also a
feature that allows plain text to be offered if the browser isn’t set
up to read html.

You can find it here http://www.limit-point.com/Mailings/Mailings.html

Regards,

Bill

On 2-Dec-07, at 9:31 AM, johnyw wrote:

That’s exactly what I mean Rob, and what’s worse, I need it for my
business. My guess is that it has something to do with building the
site with Freeway. By the way, Freeway sends occasionally html e-
mails out. How do they do that ?

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8

Sometime around 2/12/07 (at 10:13 -0500) James Wilkinson said:

Microsoft recently said that Outlook, the email client used
most PC users - will be using the HTML rendering/coding that Word
uses! Yes, cringe my friends! CRINGE! ALL of us know of the horrors
of pasting text copied form Word into a FW doc!

Fortunately, this problem was sorted out in recent versions of
Freeway. Rejoice! But still do spit on Microsoft’s self-serving,
standards-breaking efforts at market domination.

k

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