Generating html-only e-mail for e-newsletter purposes ?

Dear All,

While I know that many have mixed feelings in principle
regarding html e-mail I would be grateful for any advice /
recommendations etc. on generating html e-mail newsletters
for circulation amongst our staff here. 

Anyone involved in the area will appreciate the challenge in
creating attractive, user friendly newsletters for
circulation amongst a large staff in diverse locations. 
The 'instant accessibility' of an email newsletter that
'forces' the destination e-mail application to display it in
html is something I'd like to at least experiment with as it
might be a way of reaching more people.

Note: we currently use Groupwise 7.0 as an institution -
while it can generate html mails these will typically revert
to text when the users open them, as far as I can see, and
are therefore no good for this purpose.
Rather than requiring the user to manually choose view /
html to see the html version I'd like to create a mail which
defaults to html on opening whatever preferences the user
has set locally - as happens with many commercial/NGO e-mail
newsletters that I'm receiving lately - some including a 'if
this mail doesn't display properly click here' function in
the body of the mail.

Thanks in advance for your help, Neil
Neil Quinlan
Waterford Institute of Technology
Ireland









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Neil Quinlan writes:
 > While I know that many have mixed feelings in
principle regarding
 > html e-mail I would be grateful for any advice /
recommendations
 > etc. on generating html e-mail newsletters for
circulation amongst
 > our staff here.
 > 
 > Anyone involved in the area will appreciate the
challenge in
 > creating attractive, user friendly newsletters for
circulation
 > amongst a large staff in diverse locations.

Does _anyone_ read a newsletter because it's
"attractive"?  I doubt
it.  Either it's interesting to them or it's not.  That's me
feeling,
anyway.

 _/|_	
____________________________________________________________
_______
/o ) /  Mike Taylor    <mikeindexdata.com>    http://www.miketaylor.or
g.uk
)_v__/  "If you lie to the compiler, it will get its
revenge" --
	 Henry Spencer.

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Neil Quinlan writes:
 > While I know that many have mixed feelings in
principle regarding
 > html e-mail I would be grateful for any advice /
recommendations
 > etc. on generating html e-mail newsletters for
circulation amongst
 > our staff here.
 > 
 > Anyone involved in the area will appreciate the
challenge in
 > creating attractive, user friendly newsletters for
circulation
 > amongst a large staff in diverse locations.

Does _anyone_ read a newsletter because it's
"attractive"?  I doubt
it.  Either it's interesting to them or it's not.  That's me
feeling,
anyway.

 _/|_	
____________________________________________________________
_______
/o ) /  Mike Taylor    <mikeindexdata.com>    http://www.miketaylor.or
g.uk
)_v__/  "If you lie to the compiler, it will get its
revenge" --
	 Henry Spencer.

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Neil Qinlan wrote:
> Rather than requiring the user to manually choose view
/ html to see
> the html version I'd like to create a mail which
defaults to html on
opening
> whatever preferences the user has set locally

As far as I know, there is no way to "force" an
email client to display
a message in html.  I've used a fair number of email
clients, and I've
never seen one that disobeyed a setting to display all
emails as plain
text.

Not to get into the whole html email debate... but if I was
using an
email client that did allow an html email to be viewed as
html, even
though I changed the settings otherwise, I would be VERY
annoyed and
would stop using that email client.  

--
Jonathan Bloy
Web Services Librarian
Edgewood College
Madison, Wisconsin
http://library.edgewood.
edu/



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On 6/28/2007 1:02 PM, Jonathan Bloy wrote:

> 
> Not to get into the whole html email debate... but if I
was using an
> email client that did allow an html email to be viewed
as html, even
> though I changed the settings otherwise, I would be
VERY annoyed and
> would stop using that email client.  
> 


HTML e-mail works by sending the HTML markup as an
attachment.  There's
a nice convention of sending a plain text version of the
message in
addition to the HTML attachment, and letting the mail client
decide
which to display.  In that case, the client should
definitely make the
choice the recipient wants, not what the sender wants.

There are no mail police who will pull you over if you send
only the
HTML attachment (though I hope it's clear to everyone that a
lot of
recipients will resent this, which is probably not the
reaction you
want).  In that case, a client should either display the
HTML, offer to
save the attachment for you, or at least make it very clear
that it's
converting HTML markup back to plain text.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowlingohiolink.edu
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> Not to get into the whole html email debate... but if I
was using an
> email client that did allow an html email to be viewed
as html, even
> though I changed the settings otherwise, I would be
VERY annoyed and
> would stop using that email client. 

It wouldn't necessarily be a fault of your email client -
some HTML
emails don't contain the plain text within the email.

One method of sending an HTML newsletter is just to send it
as HTML. 
The user will see it as HTML, regardless of the preference
in their
email client.

Another method is to send the email as a
multipart/alternative mail,
which includes both an HTML version and a text version as
inline
attachments.  The user will see whichever version they
choose to
according to their settings.  Most users never change this
setting, and
by default will see the HTML version.

While most email clients will generate multipart/alternative
emails
containing HTML and plain text, people who send HTML
newsletters
sometimes send as normal HTML to reduce bandwidth, assuming
that few
people would benefit from including the plain text version.

Tom
-- 

 
Thomas Rutter
Library Web Coordinator, Information Resources
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne VIC Australia
Email: trutterswin.edu.au
Phone: +61 3 9214 4885


Swinburne University of Technology
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At 10:38 AM +1000 6/29/07, Thomas Rutter wrote:
>It wouldn't necessarily be a fault of your email client
- some HTML
>emails don't contain the plain text within the email.
>
>One method of sending an HTML newsletter is just to send
it as HTML.
>The user will see it as HTML, regardless of the
preference in their
>email client.

That depends on the client.  I use multiple clients
depending on which email, location, etc I am using (office
versus personal versus coffee shop, etc.  My webmail
interface defaults to plain text - and if the only thing
there is html it will display it as plain text - with all
the html and other coding, with a link to display it as
e-mail if I prefer.  Usually I do not prefer and I hit the
delete button instead.  I also use a unix mail client for
one account - the client if called Pine, and it is a
strictly textual client in a terminal window - but it is
fast.  No possibility of displaying html there, except as
the raw source.

-Edward

-- 
Edward F Spodick, Information Technology Manager
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Library
lbspodicust.hk  tel:852-2358-6743 fax:852-2358-1043
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