Good Find - Email Standards Project
At Pleth a small, but often frustrating component of our day-to-day business is the creation and sending of newsletter email campaigns. While there are many tools out there, like Interspire’s Send Studio, to manage these functions the lack of web standards for email clients (Outlook, Thunderbird, Entourage, etc…) makes this a hit and miss activity at best.
This is especially frustrating since I consider myself a standards conscientious web developer. The lack of email client display consistency leaves me with no alternative but to follow less than acceptable coding practices when building an HTML email newsletter. This includes the use of tables for page layout and inline CSS statements. Although the value of the services is undeniable, I often feel the customer can be left scratching their head as they attempt to view poorly rendered emails that have been “professionally” developed for their company.
Prior to writing this article I came across the Email Standards Project which exists to improve web standards support and accessibility in email:
Our goal is to help designers understand why web standards are so important for email, while working with email client developers to ensure that emails render consistently. This is a community effort to improve the email experience for both designers and readers alike.
As I looked through this site I was pleasantly surprised as I found useful information like the Email Project Acid Test results and subsequent recommendations list. I was impressed enough that I actually signed up to be on the project mailing list, which is a rarity for me.
This is a project I am going to keep an eye on.
