Related: "The Fab Four Technique to Create Responsive Emails Without Media Queries"[0] which has been trending on Reddit, but failed to gain traction here.
For browsers, multiple sites such as caniuse.com have statistics on browser usage, which can help determine compatibility requirements.
Does anyone know of similar statistics for email client rendering engines?
For that matter, I don't see anything in MJML about how to handle plain-text email clients. (No, "here's a link to the HTML on a website" is not OK; the text version should have all the same content as the HTML.)
For which css features are implemented in each email client https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/ .
It is a really good resource when creating email html templates and you are dealing with odd css quirks.
Nothing I'm aware of here, no but would be great. In a way, that what we're aiming for with MJML by packing all we know about email HTML tips and hacks in a lightweight syntax.
About plain-text, I don't believe it's the MJML role. Most Email Service Provider provide ways to send HTML and Text part separately so shouldn't be an issue to deal with both.
> About plain-text, I don't believe it's the MJML role. Most Email Service Provider provide ways to send HTML and Text part separately so shouldn't be an issue to deal with both.
The email provider can certainly send mails containing both HTML and text, but that leaves it to the application to generate a sensible text part. And many applications fail at that.
Rather than leaving it entirely to the application to handle, you might consider incorporating or recommending an appropriate html-to-text rendering mechanism known to work well with MJML templates, to make it easy for people to generate a full multipart/alternative mail containing both text and HTML from the same template.
No worries, you're right to bring it here. Ink by Zurb has been the first solution I used years ago as a developer myself to solve that tedious problem as you name it. While developing MJML it has been a great inspiration for us and can't wait what the coming V2 will bring!
I wouldn't say they're competitors; the real interesting thing here is the components, which should greatly reduce the mess of html you have to deal with. I've used foundation for emails before and the markup involved is quite a pain.
Wish it could be that way but actually the HTML for email is a more complex, obsolete and not homogeneous one. Each major email clients (and smaller ones too) come with their own rendering engine, making things super hard for developers to learn and keep up-to-date, which is the reason we decided to create and open source MJML, providing a lightweight and semantic syntax along with a component based approach making it highly extensible.
* instead of a handful of desktop browsers, there are over a dozen, each with their own quirks, most stuck with support for standards over 10 years old.
* similarly, mobile has the problems it has now (have you ever tried tracking down an Android rendering bug?). But a few more browsers to reckon with on top of the profusion of screen resolution/OS/browser combinations.
* Most ISPs run HTTP requests through proxies which each strips out their own set of tags, CSS, and JS they've decided are unsafe or unhelpful. This set is different by ISP, but you have to assume your page request could go through any of them.
I'd probably use MJML if I had to do this kind of stuff day-in, day-out. But, for just getting a few views in order, I much prefer just copy, pasting, then adjusting from a few blocks.
Thanks for sharing Cerberus, looks like a great tool!
I understand the need of a simpler tool to quickly sketch out email HTML ready blocks/layouts.
However, there is key reasons about why we decided not to stick to strict HTML with MJML.
First, the abstraction layer we provide helps to reduce the maintenance effort by removing the pain to stay up-to-date with the last email clients updates.
Second, it is simpler to write (thanks to the lighter/more semantic syntax).
Last, but not least, our component based approach powered by ReactJS makes the language highly extensible and helps to reuse the same layout across different email communications.
Hope it makes more sense to you now and you'll have the opportunity to use it for your developments!
Hey guys, quick update here as we had specific requests about more specific templates. We just added 6 today and will add more in the next weeks! https://mjml.io/templates
Are nested columns allowed? I searched the docs and gave it a shot in the live editor, but didn't have success. I've almost never had to build a responsive HTML email that didn't require nested columns.
You can nest columns in sections (which correspond to rows in the design). Do you have an example of the layout you're trying to build? We would love to help you here!
Thanks! It's powered by Slate from TripIt https://github.com/tripit/slate. It Markdown to static HTML, multi tab. It's now our go-to solution for documentation. We'll open source the MJML one in the coming weeks. You can also check the Mailjet API doc at https://dev.mailjet.com/guides, also powered by Slate.
A really neat and broadly compatible[1] method.
0. https://medium.com/@hteumeuleu/the-fab-four-technique-to-cre...
1. https://www.emailonacid.com/app/acidtest/display/summary/qTZ...