Recent Blog Posts
Blogs ยป Archive for April 26th, 2006
CSS Support in Email
Not long ago, Alex spent some time researching the CSS secrets of Lotus Notes to help get the HTML versions of our email newsletters to display properly in that client. But in the wild and wooly world of HTML email, Lotus Notes is only the worst offender on death row. There are plenty of other badly-behaved email clients out there, and most of them aren’t as considerate as Eudora (which simply doesn’t support CSS at all).
Over at the Campaign Monitor blog, David Greiner has posted a complete guide to CSS support in all the popular email clients, both desktop and web based.
This guide will save you a ton of time, even if all it does is convince you that CSS in email is a lost cause.
Consider: if you want to avoid applying style attributes to your HTML tags, you’ll have to sacrifice support for GMail entirely, and you’ll need to use both a <style> tag in the <body> to support the web email clients and a <link> tag in the <head> to support Lotus Notes.
Sound ridiculous? Tip of the iceberg, I’m afraid…
Is Your Site This Dynamic?
From the immensely entertaining The Daily WTF, a daily digest of horribly bad code spotted in the wild, comes this cautionary tale of dynamic web development gone awry.
Developer Stephan Jennewein was hired to update a web site for Firefox compatibility. What at first glance appeared to be a modest web site made up of 15-20 static pages turned out to be an intricate mixture of JavaScript and PHP code. Every one of the apparently static pages contained code resembling this:
<html>
<head>
<link href=”dynsitebase/styles.php” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />
<script src=”dynsitebase/base.php” language=”JavaScript”></script>
<script src=”dynsitebase/themes.php” language=”JavaScript”></script>
<script src=”dynsitebase/sitedata.php” language=”JavaScript”></script>
<script src=”dynsitebase/pagelayout.php” language=”JavaScript”></script>
<script language=”JavaScript”>
document.write(”<title>” + CurrentPage.Title + “</title>”);
</script>
</head>
<body>
<script language=”JavaScript”>
DataInterface.initialize();
DataInterface.bindToPage(CurrentPage);
ImageLoader.preload(CurrentPage);
LinkLoader.bindToContext(CurrentPage);
PagePrinter.printHeader(CurrentPage);
PagePrinter.printNavigation(CurrentPage);
PagePrinter.printTitle(CurrentPage);
PagePrinter.printSubTitle(CurrentPage);
PagePrinter.printMainContent(CurrentPage);
…
Google Advertises Firefox to IE Users
Most web developers agree that Firefox is a superior browser to Internet Explorer, but how do we get non-technical users to give it a try? Well… what if Google told them to?
Starting today, Internet Explorer users based in the United States who visit google.com will be greeted by the very first ad for a 3rd party product to appear on the page:
“Firefox with Google Toolbar: tabbed browsing, safer surfing” reads the ad. Granted, Google has a vested interest in promoting its toolbar, but the fact that it chose to do so with the Firefox browser (rather than continuing to push the IE version) is a huge coup.
IE7 Beta 2 Available to End Users
If last month’s “layout complete” preview release of IE7 didn’t get you working on compatibility updates to your web site(s), maybe this will: Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 is now available to end users from the Internet Explorer web site!
Unlike the previous preview releases, Microsoft is pushing hard to get ordinary consumers to try out this new beta. Microsoft is even offering unlimited free phone support for users of the beta in North America, Germany and Japan, in the hopes that it will attract the less tech-savvy to give it a try.
As far as getting your site(s) working in IE7, the words “now or never” come to mind.
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