Bulletproof HTML Email Components | Hacker News Reader

Bulletproof HTML Email Components

sendwithus.com

118 pointsgschier47 comments

I wrote up my bulletproof HTML Email Buttons too: http://www.industrydive.com/blog/how-to-make-html-email-butt... and, IMHO, my approach is better.

Two points about the linked article:

- It uses images for the rounded corners, which are a pain to create and aren't loaded by default in many/most email clients. I think it'd be better to use CSS rounded corners in addition/instead.

- Only the text in the middle of the button is clickable. The whole button should be clickable. This can be really annoying on mobile/tablet where you really want a big fat tap target.

(I've actually been meaning to update that year old blog post though -- I've learned a lot since then!)

EDIT: Some of these other snippets look a little suspect. Using shorthand (3 digit) color codes can lead to problems in some clients. And I'm not sure that padding is supported on a div in outlook.

Awesome, thanks for the comments. I actually saw your blog post a few days ago.

I wasn't aware that 3 digit hex codes had less support. I had tested everything in Litmus and it seemed fine, but I've updated the examples anyway to use 6 digit color codes just to be sure.

I agree with your point on image buttons as well. We're planning on adding many more snippets in the future so stay tuned :)

Cool, anything that makes HTML email design easier gets a thumbs up from me.

Hey Eli. It sounds like you're really knowledgeable in this space. I'd love to chat more. You can reach me at greg@sendwithus.com.

Border-radius doesn't work in Outlook 2007/10/13.

For me, that's a dealbreaker since a lot of traditional businesses use those clients.

Yeah, it's really going to suck for those traditional businessmen when they can't see the rounded corners on your buttons.

Ah, but I have an answer for that!

Take a look, I updated my post: http://www.industrydive.com/blog/how-to-make-html-email-butt...

As terrible as Outlook's rendering engine is, it comes with a reliable way to target code to a client. So you make an Outlook-only button that only Outlook sees (and, bonus, are free to use Microsoft-only HTML extensions) and then a separate HTML version that Outlook is instructed to ignore. The code's ugly and annoying to work with, but it works!

You may want to use <!--[if vml]> instead of <!--[if mso]>, and test the content with IE8 as well as Word.

In fact, just did a more complete version that works in IE too:

  <html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word">
  <head>
  <!--[if !mso]>
  <style>
  v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
  o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
  w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
  .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);}
  </style>
  <![endif]-->
  </head>
  <body>
  <div>
  <!--[if vml]>
  <v:roundrect href="http://www.EXAMPLE.com/" style="height:40px;v-text-anchor:middle;width:300px;" arcsize="10%" stroked="f" fillcolor="#d62828">
    <w:anchorlock/>
  <v:textbox>
    <center style="color:#ffffff;font-family:sans-serif;font-size:16px;font-weight:bold;">
      Button Text Here!
    </center>
  </v:textbox>

  </v:roundrect>
  <![endif]-->
  <!--[if !vml]> <!-->
  <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> 
  <td align="center" width="300" height="40" bgcolor="#d62828" style="-webkit-border-radius: 5px; -moz-border-radius: 5px; border-radius: 5px; color: #ffffff; display: block;">
    <a href="http://www.EXAMPLE.com/" style="color: #ffffff; font-size:16px; font-weight: bold; font-family:sans-serif; text-decoration: none; line-height:40px; width:100%; display:inline-block">
      Button Text Here!
    </a>
  </td> 
  </tr> </table> 
  <!-- <![endif]-->
  </div>

Interesting! So this would be for rounded corners on IE8 or worse? (I think 9 supports border-radius, right?) Bummer that it requires adding styles to the head.

Hahaha, awesome. This is what makes me come back to the hn community time and time again. Thanks for the update.

Images are going to be a problem for the social buttons, too. There should definitely be alt attributes providing reasonable fallback text.

"Bulletproof". They forgot to specify outline: none; border: none; on the img and a tags, among other things. You're going to have a big ugly border around all your social icons in some email clients. They also fail to specify which email clients fall under "all the email clients that matter". I'm assuming hotmail/outlook, gmail, yahoo? But what about native android and native iphone clients? Android 2.2 or 4.0+? iPad? Surface? Email development is hell, and I'm all for services that help with that, but not ones that brush off the details with big promises.

I used Litmus to test email compatibility of the buttons. Just checked again and you are correct. A border shows up in one of the older Android Gmail clients, but it works in all the rest. Even Lotus Notes 8, Blackberry, and Outlook 2000 :)

I'll update the example to fix. Thanks for pointing that out.

Spamfighting filtering taking notes for future updates to spamfilters... :-)

Very cool, love the layout generator! There's also http://buttons.cm/ for non-image buttons and http://backgrounds.cm/ for background images, both are cross-client compatible (even with our friend Outlook!).

Ya, I stumbled across that after starting on this. Great tool by Campaign Monitor.

One "bug" with the buttons these generate (which I've mentioned to @stigm) is that they get all wonky if you forward a message with them in Outlook.

I'd suggest solving this by wrapping the inner <A ...></A> in condition comments like: <![if !mso]><A ...></A><![endif]>

I've been meaning to write up a blog post on this...

Ah, HTML email - table-based design is not dead! It looks a lot like how I wrote web pages in 1998. I appreciate that my current job is developing browser-only but it's good to remember these tricks in case I have to develop spam again one day.

Aw, not all email is spam. Be conscious of the customer; while developers (you) prefer less/no email, many non technical people find it very valuable and have a different tolerance.

And judging by the number of subscribers to Peter Cooper's newsletter empire, and my own humble offerings, many technical people have a different tolerance, too.

That's true, but when you find yourself being the person responsible for implementing and sending bulk email, it helps to keep a sense of humor about it.

Absolutely :)

All HTML email is spam.

I'd encourage you to A/B test a text-only newsletter versus an HTML one. Or even just ask people which they prefer. I think you're in the minority.

Spam is unsolicited email. I have 3,000 subscribers who voluntarily subscribed to a (primarily) HTML email newsletter.

Why HTML instead of plain text? So that I can send articles with syntax highlighted code snippets.

I used to love splicing corners and shadows into massive nested table layouts. I didn't realize that skill would someday be useful to me again :D

Surprised nobody has posted this: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

This, Litmus, and Mailchimp's responsive templates actually made the process almost enjoyable at times, in a kind of tables throwback way.

https://github.com/mailchimp/email-blueprints

You should have just forked ink.css

http://zurb.com/ink/docs.php

Definitely a great suggestion. We're planning on creating some resources for responsive emails as well so something like Ink would be a good starting point.

Last I looked the Ink buttons were looked a bit off in Outlook. I think they (probably understandably) didn't want to hassle with Outlook conditional comments and VML... but it's pretty tough to get perfect display in Outlook without that stuff.

We're stoked to be sharing some of the expertise we have around html email. Be on the look out for even more email goodies very soon!

Is there a mailing list I can subscribe to? These kind of goodies are something I'd like to stay updated on.

Absolutely, you can sign up for our goodies newsletter here: https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/bulletproof-html-email-...

I think first thing you need a simple way to see how email looks across most known email clients. After that you can start playing with layouts. Without such safety net I would not feel comfortable with anything beyond <a> and <b> tags.

Should check out Litmus: https://litmus.com/

They provide multi-client email rendering as a service. Very handy when dealing with email HTML.

Despite the terrible name, I've been pretty happy with competitor https://www.emailonacid.com/ (it's also cheaper). I like that they show you a preview of how the message looks without images too -- that's how many people will first encounter it.

Any plans for a WebFlow style editor for e-mail? That would be awesome.

Something like that definitely needs to exist. Possibly down the road a bit... :D

I've thought about this a bit. It would be hard -- harder than webflow. If anybody is working on it, please drop me a line.

Images in email is not bulletproof in any way...

Very excited to try it out. Mailchimp is not that conducive to made-from-scratch tepmlates

That's great, but not sure about paying $79/mth to use an email template.

Don't worry, these components are free to use! Paid plans are only applicable if you're sending email through us, and even then, there's a free tier to get you started :)

The layout generator is so cool! Yoink.

Let us know what else you might find useful ;]

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