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Caniemail.com – like caniuse but for email content
- FigurativeVoid 2y agoI was using this for a feature I was working on last week. That’s when I learned gmail doesn’t support SVG???? That seems like a huge miss.
- peddling-brink 2y agoSVG supports JavaScript.
- arjvik 2y agocan't Gmail support SVG without javascript?
- cypherpunks01 2y agoHuh, I didn't really fully understand that about SVG. Thanks for the info. From what I'm reading, it seems that from inside an SVG script, you can call out to javascript functions of the parent page? That seems kinda surprising, I'm sure there are security policies around it, but it means that there are potential security and performance risks/considerations around hosting and serving SVG files that I didn't realize existed.
- barkbyte 2y agoThe comment you’re replying to is misleading. SVG supports JavaScript but only if you load the SVG directly in your browser or inline it fully into the DOM. Using it as a normal image tag, by reference or with inlined data:, it’s inert and harmless from a JavaScript perspective. However, for a long time browsers were susceptible to denial of service attacks from maliciously crafted XML files, which SVG could exploit. (“Million laughs”). This doesn’t work in current versions but it might be a reason that SVGs are rejected.
- cypherpunks01 2y agoAhh ok thanks for the clarification, that makes sense
- arp242 2y agoRendering HTML emails in the browser is rather tricky business, because HTML/CSS isolation mechanisms are non-existent or come with a lot of caveats. You want to make sure your layout doesn't get screwed because of some bonkers HTML/CSS but you also don't want the intended layout of the email to be completely screwed. It's been a long while since I worked on this, but I was always very hesitant to make changes here, because we knew that our current thing worked for almost all customers, and you never knew what changes would break what. We dogfooded our own client, and at some point a change I made broke the automated SIDN (which manages .nl TLD) emails. I forgot what exactly it was, but they did some really weird stuff. You can't just shrug and say "oh well, that's just crazy, fix your emails" because people do need those emails and getting these types of organisations to take action is like moving a mountain.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bhaney 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- whoisthemachine 2y agoThe two most popular clients, Gmail and Outlook, are ranked at 25 and 41 (the bottom) respectively.
- jolmg 2y agoThat's reminiscent of IE, being the most popular and underfeatured.
- dylan604 2y agoMost popular only because it was included with the OS and most IT departments did not allow use of other browsers. Just because it was the most installed does not make it the most popular. There was an old saying, "Internet Explorer: the most used browser to download another browser."
- lolinder 2y agoThat was a saying later in the game and among techies. Website usage stats indicate that in 2007 a solid 67% of people were using IE, and that didn't drop below a majority of usage until mid-2010. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
- dylan604 2y agoI remember hearing stats about the continued high numbers for IE, but a lot of those numbers were attributed to pirated copies of XP being used in China. Maybe it was why IE6 seemed to hang around as high as it was. Just a clarification of the numbers that I found interesting.
- JimDabell 2y agoA quarter of Chinese web surfers were using Internet Explorer 6 twelve years after it was released. At that time, most online banking in China only supported Internet Explorer and derivatives. https://www.techinasia.com/chrome-firefox-chinese-online-banking-requires-internet-explorer https://www.techinasia.com/chrome-firefox-chinese-online-ban...
- decremental 2y agoI wish there was something like BrowserStack but you send a test email and it shows you how it renders on tons of different email clients on various platforms. It wouldn't work for web-based email like Gmail but it would still be useful.
- benmanns 2y agoGood news, https://www.litmus.com/ https://www.litmus.com/ is exactly this, and does work for Gmail.
- solardev 2y agoAnd Mailchimp has a built-in integration: https://mailchimp.com/help/test-with-inbox-preview/ https://mailchimp.com/help/test-with-inbox-preview/
- rsoto 2y agoBest tool I've found is Testi@[1]. It's really affordable and it supports basically everything out there. * Disclaimer: Not affiliated, just a happy customer. - [1] https://testi.at/ https://testi.at/
- shortformblog 2y agoThis looks cool, thank you for sharing!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- iamacyborg 2y agoThere are quite a few tools that literally do exactly what you’re asking for.
- rrrx3 2y agoLitmus, testi@, Email on Acid, InboxMonster, SendForensics, Email Preview Services… Most if not all also support stuff like deliverability, DMARC testing, Analytics, Accessibility, as well as web-based render testing. I think rendering engine wise, Testi@ has the largest device/platform coverage. Or at least last I checked.
- Julesman 2y agoI think it would be more useful to list the few CSS properties that all email clients do recognize. I don't mean to be flippant. I'm serious. CanIEmail? The answer is generally no.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SigmundurM 2y agoIf you go to this page: https://www.caniemail.com/clients/ https://www.caniemail.com/clients/ and select "check all", it'll show you the features that are supported by all the email clients, and separately, which features have mixed support. These appear to be the few features supported by all clients: - border-collapse - font shorthand - list-style-type - cm unit - em unit - ex unit - in unit - mm unit - pc unit - % unit - pt unit - px unit - vertical-align - <del> element - <div> element - <h1> to <h6> elements - <hr> element - <img> element - <p> element - <pre> element - <span> element - <strong> element - <table> element - valign attribute - JPG image format - PNG image format
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoOutlook supporting padding in 2003 then not really supporting it in any follow up client sounds just about right for the dumpster fire experience that is trying to make an email look nice.
- userbinator 2y agoThe lower the score, the better. I know many who have a policy of "emails must be in plaintext only, with no attachments unless agreed to in advance; everything else gets deleted automatically."
- shortformblog 2y agoExpand your group of people, because you clearly don’t know enough people.
- dylan604 2y agoI disagree. I wish I had more people that fit that filter. Email is broken and just a platform for spam. Even if it might be from someone that I purchased something from once or even regularly, if I did not select a check box to opt-in to receiving your email, it is spam. It's 2024. Emailing large file attachments is about as old and busted as FTP. There are so many other services to "share" large files. Attachment to email was such a kludgy hack in the first place just shows it was only the best worst idea waiting for better solutions. We have them now.
- shortformblog 2y agoAs someone who works very regularly in email, it really bugs me that every time I see a thread about this topic in Hacker News there seems to be this confirmation bias that this is how the average person uses email in the wild, and I’m just trying to make the point that “Hey, this is a strong minority viewpoint.” I get that y’all don’t like HTML email, but the fact of the matter is, that was a battle lost 25 years ago, and we need to figure out how to keep what we have working for people who don’t even know how to set plaintext email. That’s what this particular tool is for.
- dylan604 2y ago[flagged]
- candiddevmike 2y agoIMO, HTML was the worst thing that ever happened to email. Plain text content is the best content.
- astrodust 2y agoIt's easy to say this, but can you imagine the hodge-podge of proprietary garbage we'd have to deal with if you couldn't email a simple file attachment to someone?
- arjvik 2y agoCan still do plain text with attachments... unless you expect that companies would move to emailing you HTML files of their message?
- candiddevmike 2y agoI think that hodge podge (OneDrive, Google drive, Dropbox, etc) is what most people already use. "Simple file attachments" are an oxymoron these days--size/extension restrictions, spam scores, not to mention the hell of iterating over email.
- kiwijamo 2y agoDepends on your use case. Sometimes I want to send a document and not have the receiver change it at their whims. E.g. quotes for jobs. Simple attachments are great for that. Also I find some people who aren't good with tech find attachments much easier to deal with. If I send a an attachment I am 100% confident the other person can open it. No so for sharing links etc.
- smsm42 2y agoI'm good with attachment when you need to send me a real document, but if the email text itself ends up being multi-megabyte blob because you absolutely must have your name in the signature in blue and italic, then I tend to frown upon this. Over decades of my work I probably sent thousands of emails, yet very rarely if ever I needed HTML capabilities, and pretty much never ones that go beyond very basic Markup formatting.
- kivlad 2y agoThe new Outlook desktop client is awful, but there's one silver lining and it's the retirement of the even more awful Word HTML renderer.
- croes 2y agoMS did it on purpose for security reasons
- chrismorgan 2y agoAre you sure? I have a vague recollection of someone confirming late last year that it was still MSO. But I may be mistaken.
- ceejayoz 2y agoI thought this'd be one of those novelty sites that just say "No." in a big font.
- beAbU 2y agoThat's usually my default answer when my design team comes to me with a request for email template updates. "No. Basic formatting only. If you are feeling frisky, tables. Nothing more"
- NoGravitas 2y agoReally should have been.
- stbenjam 2y agoHehe, apple mail supports marquee very recently... Outlook even more so! 2020! https://www.caniemail.com/search/?s=marquee https://www.caniemail.com/search/?s=marquee
- zipping1549 2y agoBost mased HTML tag
- eqvinox 2y agoIsn't AMP considered an antifeature these days? Last I heard even Google had abandoned it — but this is outside my zone of expertise, so I might be wrong?
- dubcanada 2y agoIt’s still quite wildly on websites. But it doesn’t even have support for GA4 yet. It’s probably dead just not yet on the dead list.
- dylan604 2y agoYou maybe underestimating the number of people that use things without knowing what said things do, so those things just continue to live and never get migrated away from use.
- shortformblog 2y agoAMP for email is a bit different of a beast. It works a lot differently from the web version and is used essentially to add interactivity to the email. If you use Google Docs, it’s what allows you to directly reply to a comment in your inbox.
- chrisfrantz 2y agoI use this daily, great resource.
- astrodust 2y agoAlas! https://www.caniemail.com/search/?s=strongbad https://www.caniemail.com/search/?s=strongbad
- dang 2y agoRelated: Can I Email? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27112960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27112960 - May 2021 (273 comments) Can I Email: ‘Can I Use’ for email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20948826 - Sept 2019 (196 comments) 'Can I Use' for Email - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20934601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20934601 - Sept 2019 (1 comment)
- Eric_WVGG 2y agoHTML email was such a tragic mistake. I think the whole mess could have been averted if Markdown had been invented about twenty years earlier.
- zzzkkk 2y agoIs this intended as sarcasm? Markdown renders to html, it's an authoring syntax that happens to be readable in it's "code" state. How would it solve email? The real issue is bespoke rendering engines instead of just using a rule of "everything the current browser can do, but no js".
- shortformblog 2y agoYes, this. Many more would be fine with HTML email if it didn’t work like IE6—and honestly, the only reason it does is because of decades-old enshittification that we failed to address at the time.
- pavo-etc 2y agoIf emails could be marked up with the subset of HTML that Markdown is able to generate without having inlined HTML tags, email markup would be so pleasant. Just bold/italics, some headings, tables, properly flowing text, code blocks, horizontal rule, links, and images.
- prmoustache 2y agoyou just need gemtext. Bold/Italics can be done with unicode, no need for a markup language. Images can just be links and it would be a setting on the client to open it or not. Like what the Lagrange gemini browser does: it lets you click on a link to an image to load it. I would argue that even tables are superfluous, you could put a csv file in a block quote and people's clients could just render it optionnally.
- Eric_WVGG 2y agoNot in the slightest. You can’t make elaborate layouts with Markdown. You can’t obfuscate text in images or make hidden links or inject JavaScript. Just some basic text styling (headers, italics, bold type), and images. Everything necessary to make a well-formatted message — which is what email is supposed to be — instead of mailing a web page, in a medium that hasn’t been refined for quality and safety like modern HTML+CSS has.
- l0b0 2y agoIs there something like this for features techies might care about? Like some sort of guarantee of at-rest encryption, SMTP/IMAP/POP/etc support, end user encryption, reasonably fast search, backup/restore, etc. GNOME Evolution and Thunderbird, at least last I used it, have abysmal search speed, taking seconds to search through a local DB of a few thousand emails. So they're clearly using search tech much inferior to a local DB with indexes.
- fastball 2y agoI don't know about most of your list, but I do know that Proton Mail has E2EE email encryption via their proprietary client.
- andrew_ 2y agoFWIW jsx-email has a builtin CLI email client compatibility check which uses the caniemail dataset: https://jsx.email/docs/core/cli#check https://jsx.email/docs/core/cli#check
- ryanbigg 2y agoWhat an excellent resource! (And yes Outlook is a pain and supports so very little!) We've tried building email templates for notifications for our apps where I work, and it has typically been a pain. We have since swapped to using mjml (https://mjml.io/ https://mjml.io/) to build the templates, and it's working wonders. The output seems the be the most compatible with all different devices that we've tested on. The other tool we enjoy using is Litmus (https://litmus.com https://litmus.com), which allows you to throw in an email template and see what it looks like on all kinds of apps and devices. Other thread here mentions https://testi.at/ https://testi.at/ as well, which we've also had success with. All of these have been really invaluable to designing emails for our apps.
- shortformblog 2y agoMJML is easily the best tool of its kind and I use it a lot. If anyone is trying to build emails in 2024, it's a major shortcut that helps avoid and mitigate some of HTML email’s biggest headaches.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- iamacyborg 2y agoIt can quite quickly lead to clipping in gmail if you’re not careful though.
- willdr 2y agocan you elaborate?
- joe8756438 2y agothe mjml components unpack to a very large number of html tags. so depending on how you structure the doc it can exceed the gmail doc size with a surprisingly small amount of content
- 2y ago
- Animats 2y agoIt's about content, not deliverability. It looks like it's intended to test whether A can email B, which would be useful. But no.
- EGreg 2y agoSo, does Android support inserting images yet into HTML email you compose with an app, for the user to send? It's been A DECADE NOW https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15136480/how-to-send-html-content-with-image-through-android-default-email-client https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15136480/how-to-send-htm...
- qwerty456127 2y agoWhat about RoundCube, RainLoop, SquirrelMail etc?
- Aachen 2y agoI was also a bit disappointed by the lack of open source coverage. If someone uses proprietary crap that doesn't work, they can go cry to their vendor, but I'd like Thunderbird, K9, FairEmail, and RoundCube to work for example. Anyone is free to use these so it would be cool if emails work there Would you be interested in adding RoundCube, FairEmail, and K9 support? Those clients I'm familiar with so I can easily load up some eml files into my IMAP server and try them out, but it's some 144 tests total and a tad much to do all alone for "fun"
- isodev 2y agoI love it! Designing emails is always a bit of a pain. With that said… plain text emails are so sexy ;).
- dankobgd 2y agobut no, we can't just write plain text, we have to put our whole website inside an email
- HelmetFigNewton 2y ago[flagged]
- issafram 2y agoYes. It is used to let us know which HTML elements/features/etc are supported by different browsers/versions
- HelmetFigNewton 2y agoIt doesn't say that. It merely says this thing is like another undescribed thing. At first I thought it was some kind of service for dog owners, until I noticed the missing N. So... that left no explanation.
- jeltz 2y agoAn undescribed but very famous thing among the readers of HN.
- debesyla 2y agohttps://caniuse.com/ https://caniuse.com/ is a popular tool to check what web features are working across different browsers - "can you use this and assume that it will work for others".
- ahofmann 2y agocaniuse.com is a website, where developers can check which features are supported by which browser and their versions. It is a immensely useful resource for webdevs.
- Longhanks 2y agoIf you had typed half your comment into a search machine instead of the HN comment box, you would've gotten an answer.
- guenthert 2y ago
- morgunkorn 2y agoHilarious anecdote about this website: the owner once said there are tons of entries in the usage log of people misunderstanding the purpose of the website and inputting celebrities names to try to email them. :D
- junon 2y agoI wish there was a database of some sort for these sorts of anecdotes!
- seper8 2y agocanianecdote
- kome 2y agothat's a startup idea. and the answer to the "can i email...?" will be always a static page the says "no". there is money to be made here.
- loa_in_ 2y agoThat's not true and a very much defeatist view. Yes, you can talk with people if they're willing to listen and maybe even respond. Yes, even if they're extremely popular already. Even if they're richer than you.
- flexagoon 2y agoI know for a fact that Gabe Newell, for example, reads all emails that people send him, and even responds pretty often. So I'm pretty sure other famous people do that
- mamediz 2y agoAt first glance I was trying to figure out what this is about but, so far nothing. It's "like caniuse but for email content", ok but, what is caniuse? I don't know if it is worth but, before launching something new, I wish everyone consider to publish a brief section to explain to the average person what this is about.
- idle_zealot 2y agoA fully-featured HTML "document" is really an application, not a document at all, so it makes sense that mail clients limit support. But this fragmentation makes me yearn for a real standard here, an official non-application subset of HTML that doesn't allow fetching remote resources or executing code. Just a document format with embedded media, animations, styling, etc.
- social_quotient 2y agoIs it a “document” if it has animations and non static (video) media?
- idle_zealot 2y agoArguably? We don't really have a standard format like that in common usage so I can't predict where people would settle on it linguistically.
- nimih 2y agoAn .epub file is in a lot of ways what you're asking for (it's HTML-based, it's designed to package inline media such as images and provide fallbacks if the client can't/won't make remote requests, it has limited/no scripting capabilities), and you might find it interesting to peruse its specification[1]. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/ https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/
- joquarky 2y agoPDF documents support video.
- jasomill 2y agoPDF documents support launching external programs. I wouldn't want my email client to support arbitrary PDF features, either.
- pyrale 2y ago
- kcrwfrd_ 2y agoDark mode support in email is one of the most frustrating things I’ve dealt with as a frontend dev who’s been coding since the IE6 days. Basically you have to accept that you must only implement a light mode design and choose colors that will look okay when automatically inverted by all of the shoddy dark mode email client implementations. Gmail is one of the worst offenders. You have zero recourse for picking your own colors for dark mode.
- emmet 2y agoFlashbacks to making a nice email template for a company only to find out their entire client list used outlook from a decade earlier and could just about render plaintext. There was no point in me even showing up.
- mykehunt 2y agoMJML is better than most but remember every templating language has a footprint. When possible reduce your html code weight to the bare bones minimum. Nothing too fancy. Keep it logical. After a bit of practice it’s actually easy and in my opinion often faster than MJML (For example MailJet. Don’t even get me started on Klaviyo.) Even with minimal coding/hmtl experience you can run your code through GPT-4/Bard. Bonus for including custom instructions such as “transactional intent”, Bayesian/heuristic filtering, coded for users with poor digital accessibility, under-served internet users, etc. Even with the best domain domain/ip reputation without a positive engagement history specific to that user you will often land in promotions/other tab and not the primary tab for new users with a heavily weighted creative. Remember you want to mimic “an email from Grandma” while maintaining some degree of control of visual design. Or if that’s too complicated just keep your subject line under three words and all lowercase.
- Doctor_Fegg 2y ago> Apple Mail (iOS) : 266/284 > Gmail (Android) : 111/284 Interesting corrective to the “Apple is holding back HTML” narrative that appears so often on HN.
- darylteo 2y agoHonestly the biggest surprise to me. How on EARTH is Apple Mail (OSX) top!
- ktosobcy 2y agoI would love for a middle-ground to emerge - plain-text emails with rudimentary formatting and ability to inline images. Something like markdown/asciidoc would be fine for overwhelming majority of cases. Unfortunately we ended up in a world where HTML email is a commonplace…
- EyebrowsWhite 2y agoI use plain text, and I even enable "block external image" on the client, and I would advise others to do the same, because there is just too much phishing with email..
- sachahjkl 2y agoTuta.com not here :(
- kwhitefoot 2y agoNo Thunderbird on Linux, Windows, etc.? Is it different on MacOS?
- jpecar 2y agoSoooooo happy that my mail client is not even on the list here. It automatically strips out anything remotely looking like html and it sends out plain text emails only, as email was designed to be and should still be. Anyone sending me css garbage will be directed to /dev/null. Thanks.
- mike31fr 2y agoReminds me of someone I knew 15 years ago, who often said "Anyone sending me text messages with abbreviations doesn't deserve a response". Sadly, now this guy has hardly any friends.
- tormeh 2y agoText messages with abbreviations come from real people. Emails with HTML and CSS are almost all automated, and usually some kind of spam. (Some email clients for humans probably add a bit of html and css to everything, but you get what I mean. It still looks like plain text)
- pembrook 2y agoHave you ever come across the insanely rare use case of wanting to put something in italic or bold? Or even more insane, maybe wanting to add a link in an email? Or, you ever purchase anything online? It’s kind of nice to have line items in receipts and an image of the thing I bought. But then again, I’m an irrational human who enjoys things like “aesthetic readability.” As a true purist, do you also exclusively program in Machine code? Because that’s how all software was originally designed to be. Seems silly to get religious about it.
- Aissen 2y agoNice to find privacy leaking clients: https://www.caniemail.com/features/css-pseudo-class-visited/ https://www.caniemail.com/features/css-pseudo-class-visited/
- EduardoBautista 2y agoHow would this be privacy leaking? Wouldn't only the email viewer be able to see the result of using :visited?
- nedt 2y agoYou could just load a different (invisible) background image based on the visited state to send out a ping.
- kevincox 2y agoI recommend reading https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:visited https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/:visited > For privacy reasons, the styles that can be modified using this selector are very limited
- dustedcodes 2y agoI can't figure out how to use it. When I enter "<a href="https://example.org>Test</a> https://example.org>Test</a>" it says "No results found. Why not suggest this feature to be added?". When I enter "<a>" I get "AMP for email", "BIMI", "accent-color" and lots of other CSS attributes starting with "a" as result. When I enter "a" I get the same as above. How do I check if I can email the HTML Anchor tag? The input says "HTML, CSS, ..." but it doesn't seem to understand HTML unless I'm doing it wrong?
- nedt 2y agoYou might have been unlucky searching for the a element that's really short. And very basic HTML would work everywhere. But you might be more happy to go via the feature list: https://www.caniemail.com/features/ https://www.caniemail.com/features/
- dustedcodes 2y agoLOL ok that was just a really unfortunate coincidence. I used the <a> tag because I knew it would/should be supported everywhere so wanted to test the website with an input where I know what response to expect :)
- pabs3 2y agoHmm, no mention of JavaScript or remote resources, nor any of the Linux clients.
- gtirloni 2y agoThe compare email clients option got me confused. I select Thunderbird and Apple Mail and didn't get a list of differences.
- throw4847285 2y agoI can't be the only person disappointed that this isn't Caninemail.com, can I?
- palata 2y agoI like plaintext better (https://useplaintext.email/ https://useplaintext.email/). And emails can totally be sent both as plaintext and HTML, so that the receiver can choose! I just don't understand why so many services only send a text/html version instead of both text/html and text/plain.
- Liskni_si 2y agoQuite a lot of services send both… and the text/plain version is completely different. They used to be the same many years ago, but then whoever is in charge of changing the email template only changes the text/html variant, and keeps the text/plain content stuck in the old times. It'd be almost funny if it wasn't tragic.
- palata 2y agoAgreed. But a lot of services don't even send plaintext anymore. Public services generally don't, in my country. And that's a shame.
- Liskni_si 2y agoIt is, although practically I don't really mind as my mutt is configured to filter text/html through elinks, so I see the content just fine. It's those other annoyances like tracking links that span a dozen lines that annoy me more. :-(
- palata 2y agoOh I should try elinks for that too! I'm using aerc, not mutt :-).