3 ms·

Hey, This is pretty damned useful! I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp (http://www.postageapp.com http://www.postageapp.com), we deal with outbound transacti

by JonLim 15y ago

Hey, This is pretty damned useful! I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp (http://www.postageapp.com http://www.postageapp.com), we deal with outbound transactional email, and I have to say, this is probably a godsend for our clients. The only problem I can see is the significant size increase in emails - transactional emails need to get to the recipient as soon as possible. Saving the Firefox icon as HTML/CSS was about 647KB in TextEdit as a plain text file! That would be my only reservation for using it. REALLY love the idea though. Great work!

dwwoelfel 15y ago
REALLY love the idea though. Great work! Thanks! That's really nice to read. The only problem I can see is the significant size increase in emails One of the big contributors to the size is the inline CSS, which is required if the images are going to be included in emails. That said, there is alot of work that can be done on optimization. Right now I use a list with ~pixel-high items and paragraphs. It makes it easy to represent the image in html, but I'm not so sure that it's the most efficient way. Tables or divs might have a smaller footprint, but I haven't had a chance to investigate. It's potentially a very interesting problem. My analysis professor told me that he likes image processing because it's one of the rare fields where you can apply the more abstract concepts. Unfortunately, the prospect for making money off of this thing is pretty bleak. Newsletter publishers could be my biggest customers, but they like external images for tracking purposes. Right now, I'm waiting to see if it gets traction before I do any more work on it
- JonLim 15y ago
  If you could make the output size much more manageable, and have it actually be usable for larger images, I think newsletter publishers would love the hell out of this. The only external image I can think of that they would want for tracking is the one they use for open tracking, otherwise all other images are fair game, AFAIK. Definitely something that I would love to keep tabs on if you do continue to develop it, do you have a github repo I can watch?
  - dwwoelfel 15y ago
    do you have a github repo I can watch? https://github.com/dwwoelfel https://github.com/dwwoelfel My github repo is pretty barren. I probably won't put any updates there. However, I have your email from your profile. If I make a decent improvement to the output size, I'll send you an email. I won't forget. I put a reminder in my gmail drafts folder and my calender prompts me to check it once a month. You have me more excited about this then I was when I released the app, but I'm still not certain that a market exists. My hypothesis is that the people who make the email newsletters include extra external images on purpose so that the recipient will think he's missing something. Then he'll be motivated to click the "display all images from this sender" link, enabling the tracking image in the process.
    - JonLim 15y ago
      Perhaps that is what happens, and it may even be true for transactional mail, but having icons and small images show up without having to click that button seems to be much better for the UX. The tracking image is wildly inaccurate anyway, but whatever, that's just my opinion.

by JonLim 15y ago

dwwoelfel 15y ago

REALLY love the idea though. Great work! Thanks! That's really nice to read. The only problem I can see is the significant size increase in emails One of the big contributors to the size is the inline CSS, which is required if the images are going to be included in emails. That said, there is alot of work that can be done on optimization. Right now I use a list with ~pixel-high items and paragraphs. It makes it easy to represent the image in html, but I'm not so sure that it's the most efficient way. Tables or divs might have a smaller footprint, but I haven't had a chance to investigate. It's potentially a very interesting problem. My analysis professor told me that he likes image processing because it's one of the rare fields where you can apply the more abstract concepts. Unfortunately, the prospect for making money off of this thing is pretty bleak. Newsletter publishers could be my biggest customers, but they like external images for tracking purposes. Right now, I'm waiting to see if it gets traction before I do any more work on it

JonLim 15y ago
If you could make the output size much more manageable, and have it actually be usable for larger images, I think newsletter publishers would love the hell out of this. The only external image I can think of that they would want for tracking is the one they use for open tracking, otherwise all other images are fair game, AFAIK. Definitely something that I would love to keep tabs on if you do continue to develop it, do you have a github repo I can watch?
- dwwoelfel 15y ago
  do you have a github repo I can watch? https://github.com/dwwoelfel https://github.com/dwwoelfel My github repo is pretty barren. I probably won't put any updates there. However, I have your email from your profile. If I make a decent improvement to the output size, I'll send you an email. I won't forget. I put a reminder in my gmail drafts folder and my calender prompts me to check it once a month. You have me more excited about this then I was when I released the app, but I'm still not certain that a market exists. My hypothesis is that the people who make the email newsletters include extra external images on purpose so that the recipient will think he's missing something. Then he'll be motivated to click the "display all images from this sender" link, enabling the tracking image in the process.
  - JonLim 15y ago
    Perhaps that is what happens, and it may even be true for transactional mail, but having icons and small images show up without having to click that button seems to be much better for the UX. The tracking image is wildly inaccurate anyway, but whatever, that's just my opinion.