[okfn-help] Fwd: help to embed both html and plain text in one emssage

Tue May 22 12:31:33 UTC 2012

(Forwarding my reply to the list)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Darwin Peltan <darwin.peltan at okfn.org>
Date: 22 May 2012 13:15
Subject: Re: [okfn-help] help to embed both html and plain text in one
emssage
To: Adam Green <adam.green at okfn.org>

Hi Adam,

Mozilla Thunderbird [1] can send messages in multipart HTML and plain text
[2]. However email clients are notoriously bad and inconsistent in how they
render emails (think differences between desktop browsers but worse e.g.
some versions of Outlook use MS Word's HTML rendering engine...). Most
email clients will also disable images by default which will ruin your
design unless you've accounted for this.

I'm also not sure how mailman will handle multipart emails. It may convert
them to plaintext and strip of the HTML version or show it as an attachment.

Therefore I would suggest either

* Sending the email as plaintext with a link at the top to view the HTML
version online for people who would prefer to view it with the richer
formatting. - The simplest approach and will work for everyone.

* Using a service like Campaign Monitor's testing tool [3] to check how
your email will display in different email clients and then send the email
from Thunderbird (This is assuming Mailman will preserve the message
format.) If you haven't already designed and built your template Campaign
monitor offer some free pre-tested templates [4].

Hope this helps,

Darwin

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/
[2]
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_-_Thunderbird#Send_both_plain_text_and_HTML
[3] http://www.campaignmonitor.com/testing/
[4] http://www.campaignmonitor.com/templates/

On 9 May 2012 11:41, Adam Green <adam.green at okfn.org> wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I was wondering whether anyone on the team might know how to go about
> sending an HTML email with a plain text alternative embedded within it. I
> have a HTML email all set up and ready to send (this is for the PDR
> 'newsletter'), but I really want to make sure that subscribers with email
> clients that don't do HTML emails can automatically receive a plain text
> version instead.
>
> I have had a look about on the internet and its proving hard to pin down a
> "How To". Any ideas?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Adam.
>
>
> --
> Adam Green
>
> Editor, The Public Domain Review
> http://publicdomainreview.org/
>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://okfn.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> okfn-help mailing list
> okfn-help at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-help
>
>

-- 
Darwin Peltan
Project Manager

The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

Skype: darwinp
Twitter: @darwin

-- 
Darwin Peltan
Project Manager

The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

Skype: darwinp
Twitter: @darwin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-help/attachments/20120522/feef523e/attachment.html>