In case someone’s wondering – pasting the pretty HTML stuff into an email body and emailing it to yourself does NOT create a nice email, it just sends out the HTML.
If you are seeing HTML after getting the email, then the email was sent as text/plain in the MIME type.
I don’t know how Office works, but I do know that it’s capable of sending HTML email; you don’t need to go get Thunderbird (but give it a try if you’re into trying out new email clients).
Usually to set the correct MIME type of text/html, most of these email clients have a button or a setting somewhere called “Rich text”. If you are able to find something like that and select it, then when you paste your HTML in there and send it, the recipient’s email client (assuming it can also handle Rich Text… most graphical ones can) will parse the HTML, so only showing the content inside.
It’s also possible to block Rich Text in your email client. Make sure you don’t have this setting on… if you do, all HTML emails coming your way will show you the HTML. So this also means clients you send to may also have it disabled.
I use a text mail client (mutt) and I notice sometimes I get mail where the text says “you don’t support HTML, here’s a link” linking to the newsletter. I’m not sure how they know, but since I’ve not had previous contact with these senders, I think it must be some sort of script.
Strange that in the book Create Stunning HTML Email That Really Works! you suggest making the width only 600px wide but the Sitepoint newsletters are all 700px wide. Why is that please?
No idea but I know many people want HTML emails to be printable and because you never know someone’s printer margin settings (since it’s set on their printer), people try to start with the A4-safe size (780px or so) and go down from there. I think my print pages were all set at about 200mm or so. It’s a gamble and 600px (or better yet, a measurement like mm or cm or inches) seems safer than a wider setting.
Emails or eDM’s as they are known in the agency world should be 600px because all email clients have a standard width of 600px, an great example of this is Yahoo as they usually have an ad on the right side of the page when viewing an email which on a screen resolution of 1024x768 leaves exactly 600px of space for the email. Other clients such as Hotmail and Gmail follow the same rule of thumb so that developers around the world can develop using a standard width which they know will work in any online and local email client.
Why SitePoint’s email is 700px wide is a personal preference to fit more content into a tight space, i have worked on A LOT of eDM’s in the past 2 years and the widest one i ever built was 750px wide which was cut off three quarters the way through which was bad for small screens but the target audience was known to have a screen that could see the email fine so in the end it really comes down to the audience you’re targeting.
