HTML Email Problem

[kitster79]

Hello,

I am creating an HTML email. I sent the email to someone who opened it with Entourage on a mac - it looked great. Then I sent it to some people who use Microsoft Outlook - it had some issues - the main div tag was extending all the way to the right of the window, but I had set the div to a fixed width of 600px. Also the image maps that I had created for external links were now not over the locations I had put them on (they had shifted out of place)

As I said, no problems in Entourage - it displayed and functioned exactly how I intended. But in Microsoft Outlook, I had the above issues.

Any help would be much appreciated. I can send you the email so that you can see what I am talking about.

If this is not the right place to post concerning HTML emails, I would appreciate some guidance as to where I should go.

Thanks

Kit

[tedster]

You've begun to see the core challenge. Compared to a small number of popular browsers that access a web page, there are a relatively large number of email clients in widespread use - both the desktop variety and the online webmail types. There are also proprietary email clients that may be part of an organization's internal system, and each one has its own peculiar qualities and bugginess.

Here's a really good reference discussion: The Challenges of HTML Email [webmasterworld.com]

Also note that Outlook now uses MS Word's rendering engine. Older versions of Outlook used a dedicated rendering engines.

[BradleyT]

I had the exact same issue yesterday.

I "gave up" and used HTML tables instead of DIV's and it looked fine in outlook and everything else.

[rocknbil]

Sadly, I think the tables vs. semantic HTML email argument doesn't hold up with email clients the way it does with browsers. There is no standards compliance, a proper doctype doesn't help, and everything must be self-contained (CSS in head of doc.)

Unless your message is simple enough to contain simple paragraphs, headings, and other elements, tables are probably still the most reliable. I had a client that approached a "big time" SEO company. They produced two emails for him, both in tables and both using <ugh ack cough-cough> <font> tags.

This is not to say CSS won't work in an HTML email, it does. But you're probably only going to get reliable results working in quirks mode and on a basic level of formatting.