BLOG

Mail that looks good on desktop and mobile

March 19, 2013 by in Best Practices , Technical

Over the weekend I noticed a new CSS framework aimed at email rather than web development, “Antwort“.

This isn’t the first or only framework for email content, but this one looks simple and robust, and it allows for content that doesn’t just adapt for different sized displays but looks good on all of them. The idea behind it is to divide your content into columns, magazine style, then display the columns side-by-side on desktop clients and top to bottom on mobile clients. That opens up much more interesting designs than the more common single fluid column approach.

It looks nice, it supports pretty much every interesting email client, but it also comes with some directions based on real world experience.

  • Stopping Apple mail clients from turning bits of your content that look like dates or phone numbers or addresses into ugly blue links
  • Avoiding the Hotmail “why is my text green?” issue
  • Making Yahoo desktop show the desktop version, not the mobile version of the content
  • Maintaining your brand colours and fonts on gmail

The Antwort documentation also has lots of good links and advice on HTML authoring for email. Well worth a look.

• • • • •

1 comment

  1. Justine Jordan says

    Julie Ng (https://twitter.com/jng5) is the brain behind this framework and she’s amazing. Lots of thought and experience went into these. I’m sure she appreciates the shout out!

    March 19, 2013, 7:30 pm

Comment:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

dDOS spreads to the CBLSpamhaus under major dDOS

  • OTA joins the ISOC

    The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) announced today they were joining forces with the Internet Society (ISOC). Starting in May, they will operate as an initiative under the ISOC umbrella. “The Internet Society and OTA share the belief that trust is the key issue in defining the future value of the Internet,” said Internet Society President and CEO, Kathryn Brown. “Now is the right time for these two organizations to come together to help build user trust in the Internet. At a time when cyber-attacks and identity theft are on the rise, this partnership will help improve security and data privacy for users,” added Brown.No Comments

  • Friday blogging... or lack of it

    It seems the last few Friday's I've been lax on posting. Some of that is just by Friday I'm frantically trying to complete all my client deliverables before the weekend. The rest of it is by Friday I'm just tired. Today had the added complication of watching the Trumpcare debate and following how (and how soon) it would affect my company if it passed. That's been a bit distracting, along with the other stuff I posted about yesterday. I wish everyone a great weekend.1 Comment

  • Indictments in Yahoo data breach

    Today the US government unsealed an indictment against 2 Russian agents and 2 hackers for breaking into Yahoo's servers and stealing personal information. The information gathered during the hack was used to target government officials, security employees and private individuals. Email is so central to our online identity. Compromise an email account and you can get access to social media, and other accounts. Email is the key to the kingdom.No Comments

Archives