5 ms·

AFAIK, "email HTML" isn't standardized either; most organizations that make nice-looking HTML emails have to do a ton of testing across different clients and co

by 43920 1y ago

AFAIK, "email HTML" isn't standardized either; most organizations that make nice-looking HTML emails have to do a ton of testing across different clients and come up with workarounds to make everything look consistent.

WorldMaker 1y ago
It's fascinating how much "email HTML" is trapped in about HTML ~2.5, with limited CSS support and still a ton of FONT tags and TABLE layouts. HTML 2 might be an interesting subset of HTML to "focus on" for smolweb, but it would be a big retro throwback, and not feel at all modern. If you were starting today, might be more interesting to start with the most modern stuff and work backwards. HTML 2 TABLE could be implemented as a specialization of CSS Grid, for instance.
notpushkin 1y ago
Could we standardize email HTML?
- OptionX 1y ago
  You could write a standard. If it actually gets mainstream adoption or goes into the standards pile it another question entirely.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  If you can convince Apple, Google, and Microsoft to implement your standard: sure. Attempts have been made with varying success. Your standard still needs to render in Outlook on Windows, though, which means you need to support the weird Office version of IE11 as an upper limit.
  - WorldMaker 1y ago
    Google has recently been pivoting AMP which nearly broke the web towards email. It might actually be a better use of AMP than the web, but I'm still skeptical about some of its privacy stance and ad-injection focus: https://amp.dev/about/email https://amp.dev/about/email
  - notpushkin 1y ago
    Does the email client on Windows still use IE11? (Some older versions might still have significant market share, but I’m not sure it would be for much longer?)
    - WorldMaker 1y ago
      "Outlook (New)" (aka "One Outlook") is React Native with a full Chromium webview, and the transition from out-of-the-box Windows-provided "Outlook Mobile" (Windows 8-10) to "Outlook (New)" has mostly completed, but the transition from Outlook (Classic) (aka "Bloated Corporate Outlook") seems somewhat stalled because a few big corporations have extensive plugins and cranky IT admins. (Also Outlook Mobile had a better than IE11 support and also has been Chromium on most platforms, it is "Outlook (Classic)" that continues to haunt us all with its ancient Word-based micro-browser fork of IE.)
      - notpushkin 1y ago
        Sometimes I really wish MSFT broke backwards compatibility in the places that matter, not places their corporate customers don’t care about.

by 43920 1y ago

WorldMaker 1y ago

It's fascinating how much "email HTML" is trapped in about HTML ~2.5, with limited CSS support and still a ton of FONT tags and TABLE layouts. HTML 2 might be an interesting subset of HTML to "focus on" for smolweb, but it would be a big retro throwback, and not feel at all modern. If you were starting today, might be more interesting to start with the most modern stuff and work backwards. HTML 2 TABLE could be implemented as a specialization of CSS Grid, for instance.

notpushkin 1y ago

Could we standardize email HTML?

OptionX 1y ago
You could write a standard. If it actually gets mainstream adoption or goes into the standards pile it another question entirely.
jeroenhd 1y ago
If you can convince Apple, Google, and Microsoft to implement your standard: sure. Attempts have been made with varying success. Your standard still needs to render in Outlook on Windows, though, which means you need to support the weird Office version of IE11 as an upper limit.
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  Google has recently been pivoting AMP which nearly broke the web towards email. It might actually be a better use of AMP than the web, but I'm still skeptical about some of its privacy stance and ad-injection focus: https://amp.dev/about/email https://amp.dev/about/email
- notpushkin 1y ago
  Does the email client on Windows still use IE11? (Some older versions might still have significant market share, but I’m not sure it would be for much longer?)
  - WorldMaker 1y ago
    "Outlook (New)" (aka "One Outlook") is React Native with a full Chromium webview, and the transition from out-of-the-box Windows-provided "Outlook Mobile" (Windows 8-10) to "Outlook (New)" has mostly completed, but the transition from Outlook (Classic) (aka "Bloated Corporate Outlook") seems somewhat stalled because a few big corporations have extensive plugins and cranky IT admins. (Also Outlook Mobile had a better than IE11 support and also has been Chromium on most platforms, it is "Outlook (Classic)" that continues to haunt us all with its ancient Word-based micro-browser fork of IE.)
    - notpushkin 1y ago
      Sometimes I really wish MSFT broke backwards compatibility in the places that matter, not places their corporate customers don’t care about.