WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: HTML emails!

for

From: Stephanie Sullivan
Date: Nov 4, 2003 8:48AM

on 11/4/03 9:15 AM, John Foliot - WATS.ca at <EMAIL REMOVED> profoundly
spewed forth their very articulate thoughts:

> I manage a weekly HTML rich newsletter which employs inline style sheets.
> The thing to remember with HTML rich emails is to always reference items
> such as your images absolutely:
> <.style type="text/css">
> h1 {background-image :
> url(http://www.yoursite.com/images/headlineblank.jpg);}
> </style>
>
> To address users with non-HTML email clients, I actually repeat the content
> twice... the first time non-formatted (using HTML comment tags), the second
> formatted:

John's right... Multipart and absolute references is the way to go...

Another thing I recently learned (and this is NOT the way I create HTML
pages) is to take the CSS styles (that I've placed in the head of the
document... You can't use linked CSS) into the top of the body element...
Makes my skin crawl to do it since it's not proper HTML technique
obviously... But it makes your HTML mail work for things like HotMail and
such where they chop the entire head section out. Just an FYI...

Stephanie Sullivan

Contributing Author .: "Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Magic" :. New Riders
CommunityMX Team Member :: http://www.communitymx.com
Technical Editor .: "DreamweaverMX Killer Tips" :. New Riders
VioletSky Design :: http://www.violetsky.net