Is it possible to put a page break into an HTML email? - email

I know it's possible to use CSS to add page breaks to web pages, for when they're printed.
I also know CSS support in HTML emails is poor.
So, is there a way to generate a page break when an HTML email is printed? Or given the variety of email clients out there, is that just a daft question?

See this article on CSS support in HTML emails it gives a list of what is and what is not possible.
Also you can validate your CSS here: http://getfractal.com/ once you have made any changes and it will inform you which clients are compatible.

I'd say do it the standard CSS way. It'll work for some e-mail reading agents. There's no other way to hint at page breaks. If it's really important that people can print the message then maybe make the message available through the web too and tell the recipient to print that one.

Related

In HTML e-mails, what's the alternative to table 'cellpadding'?

Since 'cellpadding' attribute is not supported in HTML5, what's the best way to apply padding to all cells in a table in HTML e-mail?
I've read that linked style sheets are are bad idea as widely ignored by email clients so at the moment I can only think of adding inline style="padding:5px;" to every element in table but this seems pretty long-winded!
Any ideas?
Even though something isn't supported, emails are a special rule. The bgcolor="" rule for example has been depreciated for a while, yet is still the best way to add a background color in email. In fact, most email clients strip out the doctag all together.
Linked style sheets don't work, even style tags are ignored by web clients.
Here and here and here are some references to get you started in the crazy world of html email design

Marquee work in mail in email clients

I have a question related marquee element? is marquee or any Js function work in mail, like gmail, yahoo mail, outlook etc.
If yes than how please define.
This is a blog post (from 2010) explaining <marquee> support in different clients:
http://stylecampaign.com/blog/2010/08/animating-emails-using-the-marquee-tag/
Notably, Gmail, Outlook and Thunderbird are not supporting this, but Yahoo and Hotmail are supporting.
As far as HTML marquee element is concerened so Answer is yes because most email clients have ability to process HTML elements in BODY here is an working example.Go through it.
if you wish to use advance JS then i think your needed javascript files must be located on server on the internet and you can use the javascript function animation etc in email body though i am not very sure but i think it should do like this.
I read somewhere that using scripts in your email may force your email/newsletter to be spammed by the email client so better not using it.
Alternatively if you wish to include common animations like image slideshow and you not having many images then using gif of your images may help you.
Thanks!!!

How to display an HTML email in a web email client?

Hi I am building a small web based email client. I am facing problems in displaying HTML mails. What are the best practices involved in displaying an HTML mail? Some things I found
Css Reset
Strip body tag in the mail
First of all, it's important to not allow all the CSS and HTML tags. I would look for the file and allow a defined set of HTML tags and CSS attributes.
For example, if you reset the CSS, you can still send stuff like <iframe>, <form> and all other possible malicious tags.
So I would start of thinking what kind of HTML tags would you like to support, and strip all other ones out of it. And then the same for the CSS.
This is by no means easy. I mean you also would have to take in account things like people trying to break your interpreter...
You could look into this Sitepoint Blogpost, it describes how people should code HTML-emails. So it might be a good idea to start there and see what's usually supported.
The one sentence answer would be "1. Use table-based layouts, 2. only inline CSS, and 3. test in every email client possible."
The client testing is probably the most important because every email client (and client + browser combination) may have its own quirks and many are just learned along the way; such as using HTML attributes width & height because Outlook won't always follow the inline styles for width & height, or that Gmail tends to add margins around images unless you explicitly set margin:0 for the HTML elements, etc. etc.
When fixing the look of an HTML email in one client ends up breaking it in another client, don't keep adding more and more styling: try to simplify the HTML/CSS, even if it means writing more markup. For example, if padding and margins don't look right, the same look could be achieved by adding more rows or columns to the table and fixing their heights/widths. More tags is simpler than worrying about how all the email clients will render the CSS box model.
There's a lot of articles and blog posts on HTML-for-email such as http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters that are helpful -- though a lot are out of date with newer versions of clients.

Is it safe to use only HTML editor instead of Textarea?

I am thinking of converting my forum input textarea exclusively to TinyMCE HTML editor. I already have both options but it is a pain maintaining both and inserting images in textarea needs preview etc...
This is more of a general question. Do you think it is safe to include HTML editor (with all the safety measures like paste only text, filter for html not allowed etc...) as the only kind of editor on a forum? It's 2011 and machines are generally fast, connection are better.
What are the downsides of using HTMl editor instead of text field? I can not imagine a blog CMS to have "normal" textarea for input.
But for some reason on forums I do not see many html editors... Even the TinyMCE site has a textarea for their editor. So is there really something to watch out for and a no go...?
I know it is more of a phylosophical question, but I guess you have experience with forums, blogs, etc...
My site is about cooking and beeing able to insert pictures (and upload them) the easy way seems to be a big plus for our home cooks ;-)
If you don't consider security (you'll need to filter the HTML input on the server side so it won't contain anything dangerous), there's only the user experience left for consideration. On a forum you write text most of the time. There's seldom any use for more functionality than bold, italics and images. The solution used here on Stack Overflow addresses this by having a very limited set of functions, and applying it in the textarea with a sane markup language.
Other forums either use old software or didn't think the improved user experience was worth the effort. The textarea-only solution fits most forums well enough since most of the input is text-only anyway.
I do think you would benefit from HTML input. Make sure that only allowed HTML can be sent though, since the user can circumvent everything on the client side.
TinyMCE uses Javascript to add functionality to an existing textarea. If Javascript is disabled, then the user will be presented with a normal textarea anyway.
I would say it's relatively safe, as long as all input from the user is validated on the server before it's used for anything.

create hyperlink in sms in iPhone

Is it possible to create a hyperlink in an sms in an iPhone?
For example, if I want the word 'foo' hyperlinked in HTML then I'll write foo in a normal situation.
If I want to have a certain word in my sms to be hyperlinked to something, is there any way I can do this? Like "I have a surprise for you" and the receiver taps on the hyperlinked word 'surprise' which will take the user to the destined page.
Any suggestions as to how this can be done? Examples and samples welcome!
Thanks in advance :)
No, you cannot use html tags in sms / text messages. All you can do is insert the URL without the tag. It then depends on the receivers device whether the URL is presented to the user as link or as plain text.
I experimented with exactly this just yesterday. It seems you can't include a nicely formatted hyperlink, unfortunately. I hope to be proven wrong by somebody else, though :-)
However, as you've probably seen yourself, iPhone is able to recognize an URL and you can tap on it to open the URL in Safari (or tap the disclosure button next the message to get more options on what to do with the URL). As far as I can tell the only thing you can do is format your SMS accordingly: "I have a surprise for you: http://foo.com" even though that might spoil the surprise ;-)
No, you can't do this due to privacy issues. Apple thinks that giving you this ability would allow you to link users to malware and such. Sorry!
i don't think it's possible to create hyperlinks in SMS.
The only way is to send an URL, and the iPhone will convert it to a link...
Use a tiny url from tinyurl.
It doesn't allow you to do exactly what you are wanting but it at least can be used to cover up the long link.
This is the closest thing I figure out to do. I was wanting to use the "
No, you can not do this. However you could use tinyurl and format it like this
http://whateverYouWantToSay#tinyurl.com
Web browsers usually ignore anything before an # therefore you could effectively hide the actual site being linked to, as long as your friend does not know that.
What actually happens is the data before the # is submitted to the web site in the form username:password. However it must be a site that requires authentication to access, or the site will normally just ignore it.
If this helps, I've noticed that a custom hyperlink is possible on the OS X Messages app, but they have to be copied and pasted. To replicate this right click on a hyperlink in your browser and hit copy link. Then paste into Messages.
Uhhh this is possible here is a screenshot of an example - I copied a link from email and pasted in a new SMS - though it appears you cannot type html to create a link....