Hacker News Reader

Comment by ibdf | Hacker News Reader

I was writing them email templates 15 years ago... oh... look we are still using tables. How has email markup not evolved?

View on HN

We still have to use outdated layout / css techniques because some email clients (cough outlook) only support a limited set of HTML/CSS features, and they seem to have no plans to want to make things easier for those who send html emails.

See https://www.caniemail.com/scoreboard/ and take note of what's at the bottom of that list.

> and they seem to have no plans to want to make things easier for those who send html emails.

We just need so called "Kobold letters" to catch on so that all the inconsistencies become an actual threat. I'm only partially joking.

it has not evolved much. and i believe that's a good thing. this is the reason why emails from 20 years ago look the same even if you open them today. given the short life of everything on the internet, email is a wonderful thing.

Yes, I have no idea why UI practices need to constantly "evolve". As far as I am concerned a lot of UI is getting worse over time so the less evolution the better.

There is some need to evolve as contexts change. Screen sizes and capabilities, computing speed, available bandwitdth etc.

Also humans seem to need fashion as a mechanism to show belonging and distinction. (Differentiate form parents generation, show affiliation to some sub culture, ...)

And then there is the hope to make the production more efficient. (Which may not work out)

There are periodic items on here from people having trouble with self-hosted email, but nonetheless I think it's also not suffered the same closed-systems/walled-garden effect as much as other protocols like IM.

I've long wished for something like Markdown for email, but something that can actually be standardised and doesn't suffer so much under HTML's influence.

I guess Google tries/tried with AMP but it's not that and I doubt they have the resilience to keep the effort up for decades for it to catch on.

You can use MJML - https://mjml.io/ - which abstracts away a lot of the ugliness and Outlook hacks.

The argument for this I always get is security. Since email is so critical reducing the surface area of html/css supported somehow makes it secure. I...don't really buy it.

It’s hard to imagine “full CSS support” being a selling point for an email client. Even for a free email client, funded by advertising, compatibility with other email clients is necessary for the advertisers.

Email clients and servers have not evolved

though Exchange certainly did mutate like stillbirths at Chernobyl.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com