Blog
Html Email
Date: 15/11/2004
Html and Email don't mix.

Firstly, while styled text is generally much nicer than plain text, it doesn't mean you should send an entire webpage with a bazillion external images and 4000 nested tables in your newsletter.

Secondly, if you have to use HTML in email, then get the frickin tags right! Things I've seen in recent ebay notifications:
<table>
  <tr>
    <td>

      <table>
        <tr>
           <td>
             ....content....
           </td>
        </tr>

    </td>
  </tr>
</table>
Frickin hilarious. And then:
<table>
  <tr>
    <td>


    </td>
  </td>
</table>
A laugh a minute.

What sort of clowns do ebay employ in their IT dept.? They obviously hand code the email messages, because they are written ala 1998 style HTML and they screw up the nesting, miss tags or get them incorrect. They regularly use 1x1 tables (i.e. a single cell) instead of a div tag. There is a hideous amount of duplicated code which could easily be done using CSS styling.

Putting the 'e' in the ebay I guess.
Comments:
Michael Wexler
30/11/2004 4:22am
Umm... You do know, right, that most CSS is stripped out of most webmail clients (ala Gmail, YahooMail, HotMail)? So, those tables suck... but CSS wouldn't really help in most cases.
 
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