Why the hell bother making the effort to be standards-compliant!? [RANT]

Sic

Sic

Sic

Soldato
Joined
9 Nov 2004
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so, i get a lovely email from the programmer guy who's "above" me at work today...saying that i need to create an html email from a PSD that he's kindly attached to this email...about 5 minutes after researching this (i've never done it before and wanted to do it right), i find out that the whole thing has to be done in TABLES. NO styles...i have to use *shudder* spacer gifs and nested tables. it feels like i'm 13 again.

i challenge you guys...make a website without using ANY styles...it's really not easy :(
 
because the HTML readers in email clients don't read CSS. they change all html into proprietary formats (apparently) and this plays havoc with CSS...i tried a bit, and got moaned at for not doing as i'm told, and after trying it, outlook made it go all squiffy.
 
Can you not embed CSS directly into the HTML file? As far as I know, Outlook Express and Outlook both just use the IE rendering engine to display HTML emails, and so you should be sorted there. Thunderbird uses Gecko, and I'd imagine other major email clients support them in similar ways, so there's no good reason to code it any differently from a normal webpage as far as I know.

Time to resign and work at a real company mate ;)

arty
 
Sic said:
because the HTML readers in email clients don't read CSS. they change all html into proprietary formats (apparently) and this plays havoc with CSS...i tried a bit, and got moaned at for not doing as i'm told, and after trying it, outlook made it go all squiffy.
Click to expand...
He's wrong. You can make CSS work very well - check any e-mails from me :)

It's true that there are some issues, but A List Apart know the answers...

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssemail/

:)
 
arty said:
Time to resign and work at a real company mate ;)

arty
Click to expand...

i've only been there a month!! :o

i shall check your crazy listapart...cheers :)

woohoo! you can use inline styles! i was made for inline styles! :D
 
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If it's a corporate email the reason for tables and inline styles is because of Lotus Notes, every other mail client is normally OK but that one is terrible. Have a look at some of the guides on Campaign Monitor.
 
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