We're creating a web application that sends emails for different purposes. Since we need to embed images and links in some of the messages, HTML is a must.
Most of the email messages can be customized by our users. We provide a web-based editor to do that. Requiring our users to enter always two message variants, one in HTML, one in plain text, is no option, that's just annoying for the users, so our current approach is to specify a plain-text part with something like "please use an HTML-capable mail client".
Is this a valid approach, or do I break certain clients that could still be relevant? I know that this question depends on our user base, but I'd like to get a general suggestion for "most cases" in the year 2015.
If this is not an option, are there any sensible ways to automatically construct a plain-text message out of the HTML message?
IMO it's a valid approach. I can't think of any commonly-used mail clients that are still plain-text only. Can you?
Related
I have lots of emails of my users that I am sending email to, but I don't know their language preference. Is there a way that I can code my email so that it can detect the language preference when a user opens the email, and it will pull the text from a set of translations that I have already made?
I currently send emails in English, but I know that I have users from S. America and Europe. But, all of these emails are .com domains.
Any thoughts?
I do not think there is a way to detect this in your email code. Even if there was, there would likely be problems:
The user may not have their client set to their preferred language. This is very common with people who :
Are comfortable in many languages, including the default language of the client.
Are unwilling or don't know how to set a preferred language.
Are using a basic client which only offers one or two languages.
People who are learning other languages and change their language settings for learning purposes.
The preferred language may not be the one they use (shared computers) which chances an unreadable email.
Instead, you could provide links in your emails to prepared translations, or an automated translator which translates your emails.
It's been years since I haven't seen, or heard of, any email client which wouldn't be capable of reading, and displaying, HTML.
I'm in the process of creating email templates for a new website, and wondering if it's worth the effort to try to provide a text version of every automated email sent.
To put things simply, is there still any good reason to send a text version along with HTML emails?
A text version will definitely reduce the likelihood of your message ending up in spam, and will be friendlier to user agents that can't or won't display HTML. A text version can be generated automatically from the HTML by most email libraries.
Why purposefully alienate some users when the alternative doesn't cost any more work?
I think it depends if this option is available in your subscribe form. If this isn't the case, there's no reason to spend time or money to create a text version.
I think it is the important part of sending an email campaigns to clients. You need to make sure that you have a text version also in case the rendering client is not able to handle html pieces. This helps to make sure that you are at least not spamming as well. Also almost all of the marketing email engines have a default option to convert the html email into text version if you don't specify the text version.
I have a site with a simple contact form using ASP for customers to e-mail quote requests. However, I'm getting quite a few messages through with no contact information; I think people assume that their e-mail address is coming through automatically.
I'd like a simple way to make the e-mail and/or telephone number fields required, preferably so that the fields are highlighted as such if they're submitted without anything in them. I've Googled for this but they seem either too simple, diverting people to a separate page and requiring a 'back click', or incredibly complicated with massive reams of code.
Any suggestions?
EDITED
You should use a combination of server-side validation as well as client-side (JavaScript) to ensure there are no security holes in your form.
For any specific coding examples, please direct the question to Stack Overflow.
You can use "ASP form generators" that generate both server side and client side scripts.
I would like to know if and how it is possible to create a clickable email-link for websites, that are "encrypted" in a way emailspiders can't collect them and it is still possible for living users to click it to open in email-clients or even copy it.
I saw some links that were done in javascript but I on't know how they did this and how "safe" they are.
thank you in advance for any reply
Most approaches to this are splitting the address across multiple elements and inserting extra formatting; then for JS-enabled browsers, they use JavaScript to turn it back into an e-mail address.
The poster example for this is SpamSpan, which even has several "levels" of obfuscation - each level progressively less and less resembles an e-mail in the source code, yet it still manages to piece it back together by JS. Although some spambots today are supposedly capable of executing JavaScript, te vast majority doesn't - and the e-mails are still human-readable with JS off. An advantage of JS-assisted de/obfuscation is that it doesn't rely on external servers, you just need to (simply) integrate the JS library.
Another approach is taken by reCAPTCHA Mailhide - the e-mail is revealed only after solving a CAPTCHA (same type as for normal reCAPTCHA). This is less convenient for the user, but practically safe against robots. A disadvantage of this is that it depends on reCAPTCHA's servers (in essence, on Google) - some people are dead-set against any external dependencies.
This would be a very simple and effective way:
Scramble email addresses
All it does is convert it into ASCII, and all you need to do is insert it where your email address would go!
Although there are more (crazily) secure ways you can choose, this would be the simply option. You can also try this solution, it uses JavaScript to protect your email.
Hope this helps!
Do all modern email clients (online and desktop apps) support MHTML email content in which images and other resources are embedded in the email?
In addition is this the standard that should be used to get a consistent HTML email message out or is it better to send HTML emails with linked resources.
Note: I am aware of the 7 reasons why HTML e-mail is EVIL but it is essential in this case. Also I have seen the article on css support in HTML emails and know these pitfalls.
Pretty well all of them. MIME multipart is pretty durn common at this point.
Yes, just keep in mind that many clients do not load the images by default to avoid giving away "alive" account details to spammers.
Don't expect JavaScript to work (some users have it and it works), but Outlook/Outlook Express have had a bad history with JavaScript and IIRC have completely blocked it by default in recent versions.