On 21 Jun 2007 at 12:01, Nate Eckstine wrote:

> Why is posting in HTML discouraged? We have a lot of announcement lists
> that post exclusively in HTML

HTML is a fine medium for newsletters as long as it's done correctly, and the
subscribers understand that that is what they will be receiving and are OK with
it.

Doing it correctly is not always as easy as it might seem at first glance. That
is why we have a whole product, LISTSERV Maestro, that has a lot of features
dedicated to "doing it right".

The ideal way to send an HTML newsletter is:

1. Make it multipart with a text alternative, because some email address strip
off the HTML part and/or reject HTML-only mail. I wrote an article about this:
"HTML: Lost in the Mail" http://www.lsoft.com/news/issue1-2007-us.asp

2. As long as you're making a text alternative version of your HTML newsletter,
why not just let your subscribers choose whether to get *just* the text
version? There is a Maestro Tech Tip in the same LISTSERV at Work issue that
shows how to send a single job that sends HTML+text to those who like HTML and
text only to those who prefer text messages.

3. Test your HTML newsletter with many different email clients. (Maestro lets
you send test messages before sending the final for just this reason -- as a
matter of fact, it INSISTS that you do so, and won't send out your final till
you've approved the test messages). Designing an HTML email is not the same as
designing a web page because email clients are not as sophisticated as web
browsers. There was an excellent posting on this subject by one of my
colleagues on the EmailRules list:

http://community.emailogy.com/scripts/wa-
community.exe?A2=ind0706&L=EMAILRULES&P=1645

Coming up in LISTSERV Maestro 3.1 (currently in beta testing -- anyone
interested?), we have HTML templates that will take some of the pain out of
sending HTML newsletters. That is, once you have found a format that works in
many different email clients, you can turn that into a template (or use one of
the "system" templates that we provide), where you just fill in text and
pictures.


--
Francoise Becker

There is only one LISTSERV(R) -- the product that launched the
email list communication industry in 1986. To discover the
story behind LISTSERV, visit:
http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/20anniversary.asp