What does HTML E-Mail look like?

Question

I am trying to automatically create html emails and trying to find out if standards exist and what attributes in email work and which should exist. Do i need? And if not, then there must be a body? Do I need to indicate which Doctype I am using?

I work with the Zend Framework, in their example they do not set anything except the content with the "styling" code http://framework.zend.com/manual/de/zend.mail.html-mails.html

Just so you know why I need HTML. This look is stupid, but our company writes support software, and one critical “error” or feature request for all beta testers is basic HTML, so they can highlight important words, making them bold, italic, underlined, etc. .

Answer 1

HTML Email Encoding I always thought you were crap. Unlike browsers, several email clients adhere to W3C standards for HTML markup. MailChimp is a pretty nice service that allows you to view your emails in 30 of some odd email clients, including websites.

They also have a guide , freely available, containing some useful and unnecessary.

In short, inline CSS will be your best bet (especially with web clients that will strip specific CSS). The tables are more reliable for styling in this case (although, being a standard warrior, I squeeze to say that).

As for the html and body tags - I send them in my letters. You must be a leader KISS (keep it simple, stupid!).

Answer 2

HTML for email is essentially the same as HTML for the web. The difference is that your email message is treated as being in an unreliable restricted area, which means that you cannot use javascript or any other scripting technology.

You can embed attachments in mail (for example, images, style sheets, etc.) or refer to them from an external source. The fact is that if you link to them from an external source, most email readers will not download them without user approval. This means that it is often best to place CSS between style tags in the header and images, such as inline attachments.

There are obviously differences when reading mail in ThunderBird or Outlook. One uses the FireFox rendering engine, one uses the IE engine. This is the same as making pages for the web.

If you take these points into account, you should be able to make nice email messages without problems.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Remember to include the text version. This helps people who don't need HTML emails.

And speaking of the unwillingness of HTML email messages: HTML is often used for spam, so it is possible that more email messages will be filtered out than with text versions.

Answer 4

Most web clients (such as gmail) will not capture external stylesheets at all, probably because this could pose a security risk.

We standardize only text messages for any critical email (for example, after activating an email account). For email marketing, we mainly work with built-in styles, tables and everything that was popular on the Internet in the 90s.

Email html has not made the same progression as webmail, try to stick to the absolute basics.

Answer 5

You are looking for a MIME type encoding . This is the standard for wrapping HTML (among other things) so that email programs can carry it.

Answer 6

Writing an HTML letter that will work in all email clients is almost impossible. Expect to use many workarounds to support all of them. If you want to see which email clients support web standards, visit email standards.org best . They have a list of email clients and HTML, and the CSS support that they offer.

Answer 7

I agree with Jeroen regarding the styling of your HTML email in the file itself, and not for linking to an external .css file. I had problems in the past.