HTML Email Standards
Currently, there are no standards for HTML e-mail and coding HTML e-mail involves reverting to the coding practices from 1999. Tables are a must for structure and this is limited CSS support for most email clients. There are so many different e-mail clients and testing for all of them is a nightmare.
Recently, there was a post on the Campaign Monitor blog about the need for standards in HTML e-mail. Having toiled with HTML e-mail for years, it would be a huge step forward if e-mail clients would render HTML to some standard. Even if it isn’t the exact standard that is used for web browsers, anything would be better than the current state of HTML e-mail.
Currently, the company that I work for produces many HTML e-mail products with little or no idea how each client renders it. Then there are browser based clients, like gMail, that strip out CSS all together. Browser makers have come a long way to making browsers standard compliant. It’s time for e-mail client producers to do the same.
It will be interesting to see if a standards movement can be started around HTML e-mail. It will probably take years to get any type of progress, but something has to be done.
→ Mathew Patterson @ October 2nd, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Hey Rik,
Thanks for the mention, we know it is a big job ahead of us at Campaign Monitor, but we also know it won’t happen without someone doing something!
We’ve got a standalone email standards website coming soon to kick the whole thing off, so watch out for that.
→ Steve - Eightyone Design @ July 5th, 2008 at 10:38 am
We do a lot of work for one particular client in which we send out a weekly html email to over 50,000 subscribers and it is a complete nightmare guessing on how the end user may (or may not) view the final email.
For one thing, I find it very hard to revert back to Table based layouts as it seems to take much longer to get things to view how you want them not relying on CSS. Web based email providers like hotmail or Gmail are also a pain, as you say, due to them completely striping out all CSS.
I for one, are very interested in some sort of html email standards – I think it would make our job so much easier.