I hate to devaluate someones work. But the E-Mail Action is - sorry - no hit. It even does’nt work with german ä ö ü. Actually it is just a new type of the old action called Remote Ressources, which works fine so far. Since 3 years I develop HTML E-Mails. This Action is not a “relief”. Its just a new detour … But Freeway is still an excellent thing- my absolute first choice.
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Hi Tom,
I just ran some tests and the email worked fine with both Japanese and accented latin characters. What are you using to send the messages?
As for what the Action is doing, it does do what the Remote Resources Action does (although it’s more improved in that respect), but it also moves all of your CSS inline so it can be used properly in the majority of email clients, changes Freeway’s default div element into a table, it removes all of the extraneous data that is either ignored by or breaks email clients AND it creates a plain text version of your email for people with HTML emails turned off.
Joe
On 25 Aug 2010, at 15:22, TomP wrote:
I hate to devaluate someones work. But the E-Mail Action is - sorry - no hit. It even does’nt work with german ä ö ü. Actually it is just a new type of the old action called Remote Ressources, which works fine so far. Since 3 years I develop HTML E-Mails. This Action is not a “relief”. Its just a new detour … But Freeway is still an excellent thing- my absolute first choice.
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Joe - please do not missunderstand me. FW is absolut TOP.By far the best Software!
Creating HTML Emails is such a complex thing. I do it twice a week. (Build it in FW, upload it to a page, “suck” it into an Emailprogram, clean the codes etc. send it out)
A good action would be: set the page to html 3.2, remove all alt tags, remove all layers, set remote ressources, center the page proper, set a proper background color, etc.
The ä ö ü thing is an upload thing: when I use the new action, Germans ä ö ü wont work. They are shreddered to symbols.
When I do the upload using the old Remot Ress. Action, it works fine …
Kind regards
Thomas
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Strange, it worked for me but I think I know what this might be causing it. I’ll look into it.
Joe
On 26 Aug 2010, at 07:50, TomP wrote:
Joe - please do not missunderstand me. FW is absolut TOP.By far the best Software!
Creating HTML Emails is such a complex thing. I do it twice a week. (Build it in FW, upload it to a page, “suck” it into an Emailprogram, clean the codes etc. send it out)
A good action would be: set the page to html 3.2, remove all alt tags, remove all layers, set remote ressources, center the page proper, set a proper background color, etc.
The ä ö ü thing is an upload thing: when I use the new action, Germans ä ö ü wont work. They are shreddered to symbols.
When I do the upload using the old Remot Ress. Action, it works fine …
Kind regards
Thomas
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Joe – just in case: if it helps, I can take you “with me” to a tour, when Iam going to create an E-Mail. Are you in the UK or in the US? (Because of the time difference to Zurich, Switzerland)
Kind regards
Tom
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I am in the UK.
On 26 Aug 2010, at 10:12, TomP wrote:
Joe – just in case: if it helps, I can take you “with me” to a tour, when Iam going to create an E-Mail. Are you in the UK or in the US? (Because of the time difference to Zurich, Switzerland)
Kind regards
Tom
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As I said - here is an HTML Emai, made in 5.51 , HMTL 4.01 Trans. Here are the erroromessages from the different clients.
If you do it with Remote Ressources it does’nt look that bad.
AOL
* AOL doesn't show the CSS style: empty-cells
failed GMail
* Gmail removes anything before the body tags
* Gmail doesn't show any style tags
* Gmail doesn't show the CSS style for headers: font-family. You can use the HTML tag "font face" instead of, or in conjunction with your "font-family" CSS tag.
* Gmail doesn't show the CSS style: height
* Gmail doesn't show the CSS style: position
* Gmail doesn't show the CSS style: visibility
failed Hotmail
* Hotmail doesn't show the CSS style: border
* Hotmail doesn't show the CSS style: empty-cells
* Hotmail doesn't show the CSS style: margin
* Hotmail doesn't show the CSS style: position
failed Outlook 2003
* Outlook 2003 doesn't show the CSS style: empty-cells
failed Outlook 2007
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: empty-cells
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: min-height
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: position
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: visibility
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: width
* Outlook 2007 doesn't support title tags for any html elements
* Outlook 2007 doesn't support alt tags for images
failed Yahoo
* Yahoo doesn't show the CSS style: position
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Remote Ressources
(By the way: The Mail was testet with on of the templates. And
keep in mind: maybe I do something wront. Iam creating HTML
Email since a few years - which means nothing - acutally)
Any way here are the quotes:
AOL
Email should be correct
failed in GMail
* Gmail removes anything before the body tags
* Gmail removes any link elements
* Gmail doesn't show any style tags
* Gmail doesn't show the CSS style: float
* Gmail doesn't show the CSS style: height
* Gmail doesn't show the CSS style: position
failed Hotmail
* Hotmail removes any link elements
* Hotmail doesn't show the CSS style: border
* Hotmail doesn't show the CSS style: margin
* Hotmail doesn't show the CSS style: position
success Outlook 2003
Email should be correct.
failed Outlook 2007
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: float
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: min-height
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: position
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: width
* Outlook 2007 doesn't support title tags for any html elements
* Outlook 2007 doesn't support alt tags for images
failed Yahoo
* Yahoo renames any link elements to <xlink>. This will disable the link action.
* Yahoo doesn't show the CSS style: position
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Here we have the same in HTML 3.2
AOL
EMail correct.
failed GMail
success Hotmail
EMail correct.
success Outlook 2003
EMail correct…
failed Outlook 2007
* Outlook 2007 doesn't support title tags for any html elements
* Outlook 2007 doesn't support alt tags for images
success Yahoo
EMail correct.
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Hi Tom
I suppose it all comes down to what you feel is the cut off point of compatibility and visual look, in reality if you wanted your email to be perfect in every single email client then you are probably going to have to resort to plain old text. The email renders are strewn with inconsistencies that make the different browser problems look like no more then a slight misunderstanding and thats before we even start to delve into the spamming filters.
As you can see from this list:
As you have already mentioned not all email applications can read all the different specifications and oddly enough Outlook 2007 being one of the worst offenders (even worse than Outlook 2000/3). Things like: Style Element, Link Element, Selectors, Text and Font specifications, Positioning, Tables, Colour and background specification etc wont be accurately rendered across them all and I suppose it really comes down to how low do you want to set the bar as your lowest minimum support.
I personally wont use 3.2 as I find it so restrictive that using it makes it a disappointing end result for my clients. But I do know that others have no problems in designing for ancient browser spec. So in the end it is up to you and the client.
As far as the actual Action goes, I have tested it out for quite a few weeks now and run a lot of really complicated emails through it, I have got a 100% support on the email clients I feel are worthing worry about and elements I feel are crucial to the design. The actual action does do a huge amount of changes to the output, including creating inline styles for every element. Even tag/items which are not referenced directly like a styled hr tag. I have found it to be far superior to the action I created about a year ago and so now I wouldn’t dream of using my own Email Ready action.
I haven’t had the chance to try it in a different language so I cant comment on that part of your problem, but I am sure if you sent in your artwork to the boys and girls at Softpress they would be more than happy to look at the output.
all the best Max
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Max
Thank you very much for the time you’ve spent to answer.
Which HTML do you use? 4.01 Transitional?
About may question above. Creating an E-Mail is not just a question about absolut
or relative links. There are so many things to watch. Layers, overlapping etc.
To name the action “CREATE EMAIL” sounds a bit promising.
To say in short - but not offending - words: The email action does not create emails.
Or am I wrong?? Is there something which I have’nt discoverd yet?
By the way I’am working with campaign monitor too.
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I did a test. I’ve created an Email (with on of the templates in 5.5.1.)
When I run a test with this template, the error list is endless.
Here you may see a part of the list for Outlook 2007:
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: background-image
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: empty-cells
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: min-height
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: position
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: visibility
* Outlook 2007 doesn't show the CSS style: width
* Outlook 2007 doesn't support background urls in css
* Outlook 2007 doesn't support alt tags for images
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Hi Tom
I thought about the title of the action and yes, I understand that taken litraly, this action will not convert an advance (css3) or for that matter a normal layered freeway document into a perfect rendition (html) document, ready to be used without any further thought and without any worries and still 100% sure the end recipient will see what you have designed.
The realities are that designers still need to think on how they are going to build the HTML documents, so that means no layers and no external referenced styles when ever possible, to name just two limitations… but the action does do a huge amount of heavy lifting and changing of the html output that would be required if you just took the standard published HTML
As far as outlook 2007 goes thats all down to Microsofts decision to set that version of the application back 10 years so it’s features would be on a par with Lotus Notes and Eudora.
Unfortunately the rendering engine for 2007 is far far worse than 2003 and that was worse than 2000.
There was an article in 2007 from campaign monitor that gave an overview on how bad tings are in Outlook:
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2393/microsoft-takes-email-design-b/
but the really bad news is Microsoft have ignored the complaints and have decided to use the same rendering engine in Outlook 2010!!!.
here is the link to the email standard project that desscusses this:
http://www.email-standards.org/blog/entry/microsoft-to-ignore-web-standards/
so it’s back down to what you feel is important and must be seen by everyone (and if that mean using hacks to get it to work, then that would be something that would need to be done by hand) and what part of the design is going to be not visable in outlook.
If you wanted, yes you could make it completely compatible but then you are proabaly going to have to resort to 3.2. and not much else.
All the best max
ps and yes I use 4.01 transitional
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