I produce newsletters for myself as well as clients, that I send out by email. One or two people are telling me that the design literally falls to pieces within their email. I recognise some computers, some browsers and some preferences combinations could disallow a proper viewing but is there anyway I can help this from happening? Go to Newsletter - 01 if you want to see the first one. Read the article while you’re there if you have time, I write one a month, strictly laymans language.
One or two readers were trying to view it in their email without allowing html emails!
One other question, when people view it within the email would that count as a hit on the Freeway Pro Counter 2?
When you built this page was the CSS button off? When creating html emails the CSS button needs to be turned off. I just tried to email the page to myself and it does “fall to pieces” in gmail, which makes me think the items were all layered.
Maybe you should create the newsletter as a pdf and mail that - or -
Put the pdf on a web page for download and email a link to the place
to download the newsletter pdf - or -
just email the link to the html web page, in your example “Go to Newsletter - 01
if you want to see the” newsletter.
Lou
On Sep 15, 2009, at 11:11 AM, Alan Reading wrote:
I produce newsletters for myself as well as clients, that I send out
by email. One or two people are telling me that the design literally
falls to pieces within their email. I recognise some computers, some
browsers and some preferences combinations could disallow a proper
viewing but is there anyway I can help this from happening? Go to Newsletter - 01
if you want to see the first one. Read the article while you’re
there if you have time, I write one a month, strictly laymans
language.
One or two readers were trying to view it in their email without
allowing html emails!
One other question, when people view it within the email would that
count as a hit on the Freeway Pro Counter 2?
Hi alan
Had a look at the way you have built it and it will fail on lots of fronts. Also if you do try to send it out as an attachment like pdf or a massive jpeg will also mean it will probably fail to be delivered to many of the addresses (spam filters).
First of all the page needs to be made in tables only. So the blue button must be off
Then the styles that you have used within the document must be moved from outside the body to within the body… or even better changed to inline styles.
You could also do with removing some of the meta details and document types
You can not use javascript within the email.
if you do use back ground images then they need to be written in a different way (old school HTML)
Ideally you could do with constructing in it in a way that if the text starts to push the images then the layout will still hold together
and finally you need to test it on different types of email programs.
I am just popping out for a few minutes but when I get back I will write down some ways to accomplish al of the above.
speak soon max
Hi alan as promised
here is a link to an action that handlers a lot of the above and a quick description of what needs to be done when you want to build emails or newsletters plus what the action will do for you.
Have a look at the examples links… especially view source on each example and you will see how drastically things need to change in the output to make the document more compatible to accommodate a wider range of email programs
Sometime around 16/9/09 (at 01:55 -0400) max said:
Ideally you could do with constructing in it in a way that if the
text starts to push the images then the layout will still hold
together
This is a very important point. Think in word-processor terms, not
DTP terms. The content flow should be simple, linear, and downwards.
Remember that you’re making a newsLETTER.
If you want a sidebar, set it as a graphic. Okay, this is getting a
bit hardcore regarding simplifying things, but it will help a lot.
I would just simplify your page…a lot. Like others have said, you kind of want a “push down” effect, so everything gets pushed in one direction if there is any movement in the mail piece.
This is VERY simple because it was just an announcement, but it worked (as far as I know):