

Rock Solid HTML Emails - bensummers
http://24ways.org/2009/rock-solid-html-emails

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mcormier
I'm having major issues trying to view the page in Chrome(Windows). The page
renders fine but the scrollbar is "Choppy". Something he's doing in the page
is not agreeing with Chrome. Not sure if I want to take advice from someone
that creates a page with such a performance issue.

~~~
adamhowell
He's just a guest author.

Drew McClellan is the guy behind 24 Ways (<http://allinthehead.com/>) and if I
remember correctly this design is a couple years old now.

Sidenote, seems Chrome has now entered the "pompous Opera phase", wherein
Opera users used to always ignore the fact that they're in the vast minority
of web browsers and point out every browser problem they have like it's the
designer's fault instead of Opera's for their random rendering bugs.

~~~
mcormier
Err, Uh. Chrome is 7% of the market, Safari is 3%, and Opera is 2%.

<http://www.axiis.org/examples/BrowserMarketShare.html>

I know Chrome is only little over a year old, but was surprised as I've never
seen it or Safari (WebKit browsers) ever have trouble with a page before.

~~~
adamhowell
The chart you cited also has IE 6+7+8 market share at only 38%, that's highly
inaccurate.

IE is more like 60%-65%+ and Chrome is more like 2-3%
([http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-
daily-20090801-2009082...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-
daily-20090801-20090829)).

~~~
mbrubeck
The axiis chart is based on traffic from w3schools.com:
<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>

That's a site for an audience of web developers, so of course it's different
from a general-interest site. But 24ways.org is also for web developers, so
it's probably a useful piece of input in this case.

(As an aside, scrolling is perfectly smooth for me, in the latest Chrome beta
on Linux.)

~~~
adamhowell
If that's what you were originally intending something like "Chrome is 7% of
the [web developer] market" would be a little more accurate.

Anyway, I was just having some fun, 24ways is a side-project for Drew, so
maybe drop him a note and let him know it looks off in Chrome and I'm sure
he'll try and find the time to fix it.

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aeroevan
Just remember to include a text/plain message too for those of us who keep
text/html in their browsers as God intended...

~~~
diN0bot
do you mean include a plain text and html message...and only one will shop up
depending on the email viewer? where can i find out more about this and other
best practices wrt sending email newletters and progress reports to users?

~~~
seiji
Here you go: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Alternative>

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aw3c2
That site abuses CSS&HTML so badly that it takes all cpu to render.

~~~
bugs
Firefox on linux on a slow laptop/internet connection but the site loaded
rather quickly compared to sites like new york times and reuters among others

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ams6110
Forget it. Email should be terse, and plain text, especially if it's
unsolicited. Anything long or full of images and multiple fonts goes straight
to the "Junk" folder.

~~~
teej
Seeing advice to the tune of "don't do it because it's bad!" causes my Hacker
sense to sound off alarms. I have to tell myself "You are not the average
user!" three times a day, and I'm just making stupid Facebook games.

HTML email is absolutely something you should test. Take 10% of your email
list and hit them with an HTML-ized version of your marketing email. How did
they respond? Did they buy more or less? Did they unsubscribe?

Asking "Do people want an HTML email?" is the wrong question. Asking "Do
people spend more from an HTML email?" is the right question. Anything less
from a startup is leaving money on the table.

~~~
gaius
_I have to tell myself "You are not the average user!" three times a day_

Exactly. I generate an awful lot of HTML email - it goes to people who want to
open their Outlook in the morning and have a bunch of stuff summarized in
graphs and tables. It's trivial to generate reports this way. Weirdly some
people prefer their reports as an email saying "please see attached report"
and the content itself in a PDF! That's easy enough too tho' _shrug_

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scorxn
Nice overview. See <http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/> for more depth
based on a much, much larger sample size.

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alizaki
small tip: DONT add video to email. Spam filters will kill it. Asap.

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TravisLS
Most CSS rules work pretty well in emails, as long as you're careful. This
list details how some CSS rules work in certain rendering engines:

<http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/>

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johnl
I think the guy has a monkey on his back. But I agree with him about emails
being both profitable and the importance of making the end users experience a
smooth one.

