Every few months, I find the time to update the cross-client html template. Again, I used the returnPath tool to help me get a handle on best practices. I improved it over the previous one in a few ways. Here is a quick list of what I know:
- SpamAssassin will give you bad marks for spam if you:
- include the word “Dear” near the top of your message. (Crazy, huh?)
- make anything font: 0px. (oops, I got rid of that)
- send the mail from a long URL domain with 4 or more levels.
- My template works in:
- AOL 9
- AOL Web
- Comcast
- Earthlink
- Gmail
- Lotus Notes 6.5.4
- Mail.com
- MSN Hotmail
- Outlook 2003
- Outlook 2007
- Outlook Express 6
- Outlook XP
- Thunderbird
- Virgin Media (UK)
- Windows Live Hotmail
- Windows Mail
- Yahoo! Classic
- Yahoo! Mail
- Never use CSS classes, only inline styles
- You can make a nice email with rounded corners if you are careful.
- Shadows are possible if you know the exact height/width of the mail
- Images as calls to actions are ok, but use alt= or title= to give them alt text.
- There needs to be email rendering standards.
Making emails that work are really hard. I hope this template helps people out. It’s usually my most popular page on the blog.
Thanks for updating that once more!
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Wanted to say thank you for offering this template… I used it as the basis for our new Community Events e-mail… safe to say I couldn’t have done it myself!
Thanks very much for your blog – great reference. This template renders in Gmail very nicely with the exception of a very thin, white stripe under the rounded corners at the bottom. Any ideas for how to eliminate this?
Something may have changed since I built this. (Aug, 2008) Is the problem in all browsers? If yes in Firefox, use Firebug to figure out what is happening. Is there a difference between the corners on the outside versus the column bottom corners? Unfortunately, I don’t have much time to troubleshoot.