Link within email that opens a dialog - email

Ok, I have a client with a peculiar request. He wants to receive an (generated by a workflow) email with a hyperlink that will open a pop-up dialog if you click on it. Note: the link within the email should open a popup and not a web page in a browser.
I immediately thought this would be impossible, but after looking around a bit I found out that you can create a workflow variable with tags in them and insert them into the email body.
eg: here
The conclusion that I draw from this is that an email consists of html code that the email client renders. Now I'm wondering if there is a way to make use of a tag no cause a modal dialog to pop up?
I guess the question is what functionality the email client (Microsoft Outlook) supports. I can't figure how to attach some JavaScript or something that will be used by Outlook. Is there perhaps some embedded functionality within Outlook to accomplish this?

That is very easy. Use this sample code and understand how it works with just normal "mailto" function:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<p>
This is an email link:
<a href="mailto:someone#example.com?Subject=Hello%20again">
Send Mail</a>
</p>
<p>
</p>
</body>
</html>

use
window.open('example.html',400,600) ​;
in your HTML code..
Also Refer this link for the answer of your question
http://www.coderanch.com/t/121512/HTML-CSS-JavaScript/Opening-popup-JS-outlook-mails

Related

How can an email reply or forward be composed in html emails?

I'm creating a simple email client and I'm having trouble with Reply and Forward in html emails.
When I have the user compose the reply message, how do I append that content to the top of the message? I have done some investigating with how outlook does it by injecting the new message content into a paragraph or div or something like that.
How is it done in general, i.e. gmail, yahoo, etc. How do they figure out where to inject the reply content in the html?
I'm using c# so ideally there is some c# library that can handle this? If not then some idea how it's done generally so I can create a solution for it.
I've read wikipedia's Posting Style article and it gives a good overview of the general idea but nothing about how to do it in html.
Some Background
When composing HTML email, it is important to recognize that email clients have rather limited support for HTML and the level of support varies across email clients.
Because of that, although <div> and CSS are the correct layout tools for web pages, that is not true for HTML email. Even today, use <table> for layout control for HTML emails.
Additionally, the only reliable means to apply CSS is to the HTML elements with a style= attribute on each element. CSS declarations in a <head> section are often ignored by the email client. When crafting HTML email, I actually use CSS in the <head> and, once it looks correct, use this page to convert the HTML to use style= attributes. There are other options.
Not only will the <head> tag often be ignored, but so will any <body> tag.
Solving Your Problem
I would suggest placing the text included in the reply within a table (with a single <tr> and single <td>), and applying an inline CSS style to that table. That allows you to apply formatting, such as placing a colored bar down the left-hand side, italicizing the text, etc.).

Mail Chimp subscriber string

Does anyone know how to get the relevant u code in this strng from mail chimp? they used to have chiclets that included this string but not anymore.
Here is an example of one that works and outputs that number:
http://themebeans.us6.list-manage2.com/subscriber-count?b=00&u=57e41705-395c-4dc2-a09b-78cff10f08f6&id=739445b065
I have tried to follow this method with mine e.g.:
http://richpearsondesigner.us7.list-manage.com/subscriber-count?b=1&u=5b14adb7f3334132a65f527cb&id=e98cecd630
However as you can see when you add both URL's to the browser themebeans works and mine errors, I'm assuming it's the 5b14adb7f3334132a65f527cb part that is wrong (no - in the string)
Any help from anyone pleaseeeee.
So, a quick look through the coding on this Smashing Magazine page revealed the following:
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript" src="http://smashingmagazine.us1.list-manage1.com/subscriber-count?b=34&u=e768e688-36c3-4c2d-88fa-982d9d3f254b&id=a1666656e0"></script>
Note how this script simply relies on the user knowing the correct information for the various parameters. This means we can go and find out what our ‘list-manage.com’ datacenter is, our ‘u’ ID number is, and finally our ‘ID’ number.
How to
Log into your MailChimp account and select the list you wish to use for your subscriber count button. Select Signup Forms then Embedded, so that we can reveal the code used to make a signup form specifically for the selected list.
Select the Naked option, and you should see code similar to the following:
<!-- Begin MailChimp Signup Form -->
<div id="mc_embed_signup">
<form action="http://YOUR-USERNAME-HERE.YOUR-DC.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=YOUR-U-NUMBER&id=YOUR-ID-NUMBER" method="post" id="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" name="mc-embedded-subscribe-form" class="validate" target="_blank" novalidate>
So we simply replace these details with those in the code above, and we get your very own Subscriber Count Button!
Originally posted here

Is there any sense in using the <title> tag in HTML e-mail?

When sending an HTML e-mail, is there any sense in using the <title> tag? In the PHP Manual, for instance, they use such a tag in their main sample code. However, I see no reason why an e-mail client would use this title and not the Subject from the e-mail. Is there any reason to set this tag?
I've been looking into this myself as I'm writing a PHP mailing list manager script that uses the sendmail() function.
The script allows the admin to create and send multiform emails (both text and html versions).
After much testing I have found that some email servers appear to have issues with the title tag (<title></title>).
I created a test email and sent it to 5 of my email address, my #blueyonder.co.uk email failed to arrive but the 4 others had no problems.
After a process of elimination it turned out that the #blueyonder.co.uk mail servers did not like the title tags in the html part of the email message, when I removed the tag the email arrived no probs.
Very strange!
The only use I would see is that some clients, like Outlook, allow you to view an email in a browser for better rendering. It would then be a plus to have the html title tag set.
(Old question, I know ;) )
My experience is that some mail clients will display the <title> tag in their email preview and some won't. Some clients preview will be "Subject + <title> + Preheader" and some will only be "Subject + preheader", so that creates an inconsistent experience.
Because of that, I found it's better to only use a preheader.
For completion's sake, the "Preheader" is a hidden text form the body that is only used in the preview, for example, something like...
<div style="display: none; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">
Insert hidden preheader text here
</div>

HTML and Plaintext email messages appropriate way to include a hyperlink in both?

Emails sent with html are obviously able to easily contain hyperlinks to web resources. What I want to understand is how best to include those links in a plaintext portion of the email?
Does this have any affect on spam ?
For example, our IT management system sends out emails and occasionally we encounter a customer that is ending up with system messages in their spam.
The system handles tickets and notifies the user when they are updated or modified so they know to go back to the site to check the status of their ticket.
The HTML portion would like something like:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body>
<div>Short description: can't see web content hosted on phoenix</div><div>Assigned to: .... </div>
<div>Assignment Group: ...</div>
<div>Priority: 4 - Standard</div>
<div>Click here to view:
LINK-INC999999
</div>
<div>Ref:MSG951683</div>
</body>
</html>
And the plaintext portion would like something like:
Short description: can't see web content hosted on phoenix
Assigned to: ...
Assignment Group: ...
Priority: 4 - Standard
Click here to view: LINK-INC999999
Ref:MSG951683
In this plaintext portion what is most appropriate way to include the same hyperlink so a user can easily see this link whether they prefer email in plaintext or html ?
I don't know about the spam implications, but plain text does not have hyperlinks. Some email clients will render a link on any text that starts with a URI schema (http://, https://, mailto: etc...), however you can't rely on that.
If you want people viewing plaintext to be able to use the link, you should render it on a line on its own. Then they can copy/paste into a browser if they wish to.

using form buttons for spamproof email-addresses

I have been looking at some methods for spamproof email methods here. I'd like to propose a more simple approach: Since I need a couple of different email addresses I considered just using a selectbox with JS or serverside redirect, as per examples on here.
Because google doesn't spider forms (dixit Matt Cutts), and spam-harvester script don't either (I think????) this would make sense to do.
I would love to be able to do this without using a script. So why not use one form per email?
<form action="mailto:test#domain.tld" method="get">
<input type="submit" value="test#domain.tld"/>
</form>
It seems the button text can be copied but not pasted, so that's a disadvantage.
Is this approach any good? or any other recommendations?
A robot uses the text of the page to get the email. It does not care if that text is in a button or within the body so using a button will not help.
Outside of using javascript, the only solution I know of would be written text, an image or Flash.
Create an image with your email or write out the email like: "test at domain dot tld"
Flash could provide you with a more secure (but not 100%) way of allowing people to click on an email but would not work on iPhone browsers and those that do not have the plug-in.
Another way is to use a simple captcha to before displaying the email in the PHP code.
Email: (1+2 = ?) then test#domain.tld
Because:
The email address is still in the page, and thus easily harvestable
mailto: URIs as form actions often fail
The reason server side form handlers stop email addresses being harvested is because the email address is not exposed to the user.