5 ms·

Can anyone explain to me why HTML inside email is not working for these use cases, and why we need a new standard if HTML powers these things on the web?

mrcarruthers 8y ago
Because HTML in emails is a notoriously painful process to get working even remotely well. Not all email providers support HTML in the same way. Some examples: * At one point Gmail did not support style tags and all styles had to be inline. * Outlook for years used the Word HTML processor which had all sorts of limitations. Hell to get a button you had to create it in VML and put a conditional "if Microsoft do this" on it. * Some (up until a few years ago) versions of Outlook ignore either padding/margin on CSS (forget which one) * In order to layout your email so that it works across all clients, forget about using anything remotely modern. You have to use tables everywhere like it's 2000 all over again. I'm probably forgetting a bunch, it's been a couple years since I had to deal with it. With all these issues, adding yet another thing onto it is just asking for pain.
- ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
  >Not all email providers support HTML in the same way. Excellent. Let's introduce one more standard.
  - taormina 8y ago
    https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
  - kkarakk 8y ago
    yes BUT like it or not this standard has the backing of the defacto ruler of the consumer email space - gmail.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > HTML in emails is a notoriously painful process to get working even remotely well. That's a feature, not a bug. If it discourages people from using HTML in emails even a little, that's a good thing.
- danShumway 8y ago
  > Because HTML in emails is a notoriously painful process to get working even remotely well. > Not all email providers support HTML in the same way. What will make AMP support different?
kmlx 8y ago
i've had the displeasure of developing HTML for emails. never again!

mrcarruthers 8y ago

Because HTML in emails is a notoriously painful process to get working even remotely well. Not all email providers support HTML in the same way. Some examples: * At one point Gmail did not support style tags and all styles had to be inline. * Outlook for years used the Word HTML processor which had all sorts of limitations. Hell to get a button you had to create it in VML and put a conditional "if Microsoft do this" on it. * Some (up until a few years ago) versions of Outlook ignore either padding/margin on CSS (forget which one) * In order to layout your email so that it works across all clients, forget about using anything remotely modern. You have to use tables everywhere like it's 2000 all over again. I'm probably forgetting a bunch, it's been a couple years since I had to deal with it. With all these issues, adding yet another thing onto it is just asking for pain.

ganeshkrishnan 8y ago
>Not all email providers support HTML in the same way. Excellent. Let's introduce one more standard.
- taormina 8y ago
  https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- kkarakk 8y ago
  yes BUT like it or not this standard has the backing of the defacto ruler of the consumer email space - gmail.
JohnFen 8y ago
> HTML in emails is a notoriously painful process to get working even remotely well. That's a feature, not a bug. If it discourages people from using HTML in emails even a little, that's a good thing.
danShumway 8y ago
> Because HTML in emails is a notoriously painful process to get working even remotely well. > Not all email providers support HTML in the same way. What will make AMP support different?

kmlx 8y ago

i've had the displeasure of developing HTML for emails. never again!