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

Fri May 25 12:57:01 UTC 2012

This seems to be a common but surprisingly complex issue where Google
doesn't find straightforwards solutions. Maybe worth documenting your
findings and experiences it our wiki.okfn.org?

/nils.

PS: from what i remember witnessing others fighting this issue,
embedding images is quite tricky: loading them from external web servers
is a privacy issue, and the receiving mail client might only display
them after raising a warning. On the other hand major mail applications
seem to not agree on how to embed imageswith in a multipart-mail - or?

On 05/23/2012 10:45 AM, Adam Green wrote:
> Wow great Darwin, thank you so much! Looks like this will work. 
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Adam.
> 
> On 22 May 2012 14:31, Darwin Peltan <darwin.peltan at okfn.org
> <mailto:darwin.peltan at okfn.org>> wrote:
> 
>     (Forwarding my reply to the list)
> 
>     ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>     From: *Darwin Peltan* <darwin.peltan at okfn.org
>     <mailto: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 <mailto: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
>     <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <http://www.okfn.org/>
> 
>     Skype: darwinp
>     Twitter: @darwin
> 
> 
> 
> 
>     -- 
>     Darwin Peltan
>     Project Manager
> 
>     The Open Knowledge Foundation 
>     http://www.okfn.org <http://www.okfn.org/>
> 
>     Skype: darwinp
>     Twitter: @darwin
> 
> 
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> 
> 

-- 
See http://nils.toedtmann.net/ for contact details.