• a man with a pencil
• lab home page
• experiments
  • browser bugs
    • conditional comments bug
    • Firefox DHTML bug
  • centre a page
  • cross-browser PNG alpha
    • introduction
    • JavaScript: image swap
    • JavaScript test page
    • PHP: targeted content
    • PHP test page
    • conclusion
  • IE: opacity and image loader filters
  • dynamic form elements
  • forms without tables
  • IE tool tips
• musings
  • blinkin' Firefox
• background
  • browser detection
  • conditional comments
  • trinity

Comments or questions?
Please contact me.

©2009, Nigel Moore.

Creating HTML E-mail in Apple Mail

HTML e-mail, you either love it or hate it. Or you're ambivalent to it. That pretty much covers all the bases I guess.

Personally, I blow hot and cold over HTML e-mail. On the one hand it does allow for more attractive mail formatting than boring old plain text, but in a manner that is more flexible and has wider cross-platform support than proprietary RTF formats. On the other hand, it's gained a bad reputation from its abuse by spammers and its role in the delivery of some purely hideously formatted messages—presumably from the same people who had a taste bypass before styling their websites with gaudy colours, confusing backgrounds, and multiple animated GIF images.

But, no matter. HTML is a legitimate format for e-mail, and it can be attractive when used well. But how easy is it to create HTML e-mail if you're using Apple's Mail application? The answer is: not very. Which is at odds with Apple's claims of computing “for the rest of us”.

I found a guide to creating HTML e-mail in Apple Mail, which gives step-by-step instructions. Should step-by-step instructions even be needed?

Create the HTML page that will be used as the email in whatever way you want (ie. Dreamweaver, text editor, or even -- god forbid -- Front Page).

Err, hello? Dreamweaver? Text editor? Way to overcomplicate things. And totally out-of-bounds for the less technically-inclined. Whatever happened to simple Format > HTML? Even Outlook Express can handle this, so why can't the computer “for the rest of us”? Besides, unless you're wise to the idiosyncracies of HTML e-mail, the beautifully designed message that your web page editor created for you will look like crap in many mail readers. For a start, forget semantic markup and linked or even embedded style sheets. Say ‘hello’ to inline styles and ‘code soup’.

Upload the html and images to your server.

Actually, you don't need to upload anything (to a remote server), you can preview your page in Safari from Finder or OS X's own local Apache server. Finally you e-mail the page from Safari!

Mail will load up and a new email will open that uses the HTML page.

Well, what could be simpler? Umm, Outlook Express for a start!