Been trying to follow this article on making future proof responsive email templates:
https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/creating-a-future-proof-responsive-email-without-media-queries--cms-23919
What I'm working on looks good in most clients, but Outlook isn't rendering some of the background colors.
Should look like this with gray borders (this is in Gmail):
Outlook 2016, however, looks like the following:
Right now I am just trying to get the gray border to show up. Will figure out why the background image isn't later.
Anyway, here is what I have so far. Any suggestions on how to get this gray background to show up the entire width of email body like it does in Gmail?
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<!--[if !mso]><!-->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
<!--<![endif]-->
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title></title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles.css" />
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
<style type="text/css">
table {border-collapse: collapse;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<style type='text/css'>
/* Basics */
body {
margin: 0 !important;
padding: 0;
background-color: #ffffff;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
table {
border-spacing: 0;
font-family: sans-serif;
color: #333333;
}
img {
border: 0;
}
div[style*="margin: 16px 0"] {
margin:0 !important;
}
.content {
width: 100%;
table-layout: fixed;
-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;
-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;
background-color: #7E8083;
}
.webkit {
max-width: 902px;
margin: 0 auto;
}
.outer {
margin: 0 auto;
width: 95%;
max-width: 902px;
background-color: #1D428A;
color: #FFF;
}
.content-area {
background-position: center;
background-size: 100% 100%;
}
.footer {
font-size: 10px;
-webkit-text-size-adjust: 95%;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="header" align="center">
<table cellpadding="20">
<tr>
<td>
<img src="https://marketing-image-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/a.gif" width="150" alt="The Company Logo">
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<div bgcolor="#7E8083" class="content">
<div class="webkit">
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
<table width="902px" align="center">
<tr>
<td>
<![endif]-->
<table height="381" class="outer" align="center">
<tr align="center">
<td background="https://marketing-image-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/8.gif" align="center" class="content-area">
[content here]
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<![endif]-->
</div>
</div>
<div class="footer" align="center" size="10">
<p>If you would like to unsubscribe and stop receiving these emails
click here. We encourage you not to do so to ensure you receive important emails related to your account.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
You can try bulletproof background images:
<td background="https://marketing-image-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/a.gif" bgcolor="#1D428A" width="120" height="92" valign="top">
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
<v:rect xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" fill="true" stroke="false" style="width:120px;height:92px;">
<v:fill type="tile" src="https://marketing-image-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/a.gif" color="#1D428A" />
<v:textbox inset="0,0,0,0">
<![endif]-->
<div>
[content here]
</div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
</v:textbox>
</v:rect>
<![endif]-->
</td>
See: https://backgrounds.cm/
There are a couple of things that we are generally asked that unfortunately are just not possible in Outlook and therefore... Unfortunately Outlook has lots of limitations on it's CSS support.
A good guide for CSS support for the most email clients can be found here: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/
Outlook does not really work with <div>. You can use it, but don't be surprised when it doesn't work as expected.
Outlook does not work with background images the way you are using them. #caiovisk has an example that I suggest you pursue.
As far as background colors go, try using: background: #ff0000; instead of background-color: #ff0000;. `bgcolor="#ff0000" should always work on tables. This will also fix your issues with Android.
width="902px" is not going to work. Try `width="902" for Outlook instead. I do not understand why you're specifying a width that is 322 pixels wider than will show up in the Outlook viewport. Consider a narrower email.
My suggestion is to stop developing the way you're pursuing emails. Find a decent responsive email template and follow that as an example. The direction you're headed has so many issues I can see that you're just asking for trouble.
Good luck.
I am trying to load two different images in an email based on the screen size the viewer is using.
I have a WordPress ninja form thank you email that I want sent out with an image displayed in the body. If the screen size is smaller than 501px I want image displayed if it is smaller than 500px I want a different image displayed. The difference being one is less text and easier to read on mobile.
I have tried media queries but they do not work for the email formatting. I used them on a test html page to make sure my code was working and it was fine so maybe media queries don't work for email?
Is there another way to change the images based on the size of the screen the email is viewed on?
Here is my code:
HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<title></title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>
<div class='ourStory'>
<img src='http://www.TheBetterSoftwareCompany.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/04/ourstory-TBSC-edit3-mobile-copy.jpg' />
</div>
</body>
</html>
CSS
#media all and (min-width: 501px) {
div.ourStory{
content:url('http://www.TheBetterSoftwareCompany.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/04/ourstory-TBSC-edit3-copy.jpg');
}
}
Responsive Email cannot be achieved properly or even at all with <div> you will need to use <table>
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/3472/div-tags-in-html-email-newsletters/
Services such as mailchimp know about these and have their own built in tool to design email.
http://templates.mailchimp.com/development/responsive-email/responsive-column-layouts/
I suggest you use a library such as this one to accomplish a better responsive design for your email.
http://zurb.com/ink/docs.php
Example code:
<table class="container">
<tr>
<td>
<table class="row">
<tr>
<td class="wrapper">
<table class="eight columns">
<tr>
<td>
Eight Columns
</td>
<td class="expander"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
<td class="wrapper last">
<table class="four columns">
<tr>
<td>
Four Columns
</td>
<td class="expander"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Also many email provider and client doesnt support linked css so you have to rely on inliner tools which will apply style="" attributes to your HTML elements.
As the links say, div can and should be used in email, but the complex layouts require Tables. I personally think a combination is the best course, which I will use in my sample below.
The major issue that jumps out at me is that you have a link tag to the stylesheet (almost universally no support on email clients) and that you use more complex CSS (content:) on the media query (also not well supported).
I created some code using table and div while also updated some css, etc to your above code - including Outlook conditional statements. You would likely need to test this across clients, but this is the best and pretty much only way to do an image swap in email. You can also change the background-image in the media queries if you want to switch it again at a lower screen size.
See below:
.ourStory { width:640px;}
#media only screen and (max-width: 640px) {
.ourStory { width:100% !important;}
.image1 {display:none !important; visibility:hidden !important; overflow:hidden; width:0px !important; height:0 !important; line-height:0 !important;}
.bgimage {width:100% !important; height:100px !important;}
}
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0;' name='viewport' />
<title></title>
<style>
<!-- Inline Style Sheet Here -->
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class='ourStory' style="width:100%; max-width:640px;">
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
<table width="640" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td>
<![endif]-->
<table class="ourStory" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="max-width:640px;">
<tr>
<td class="bgimage" background="http://placehold.it/639x100" bgcolor="#7bceeb" width="100%" height="150" valign="top">
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
<v:rect xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" fill="true" stroke="false" style="width:639px; height:150px;">
<v:fill type="tile" src="http://placehold.it/639x100" color="#7bceeb" />
<v:textbox style="mso-fit-shape-to-text:true" inset="0,0,0,0">
<![endif]-->
<div><img class="image1" width="100%" src='http://placehold.it/640x150' style="border:none; display:block;" />
</div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
</v:textbox>
</v:rect>
<![endif]-->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]></td></tr></table><![endif]-->
</div>
</body>
</html>
I have a table in which the second column should have a certain width (50px for example).
When I have a textbox with a width of 100% in this column, but with a lot of text, the width of the column is always as long as the text.
see my code + screenshot
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head runat="server">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td></td>
<td style="width:50px;"><input type="text" value="very long text which doesn't fit into the whole textbox" style="width:100%" />
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
How can I force the column to be 50px long in IE7?
You may achieve this by using IE conditional comments as follows
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head runat="server">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Test</title>
<style>
.myInput{width: 100%;}
</style>
<!--[if IE 7]>
<style>
.myInput{width: 50px;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
</head>
<body>
<table border="1">
<tr>
<td></td>
<td style="width:50px;"><input class="myInput" type="text" value="very long text which doesn't fit into the whole textbox"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
I have checked this on IE tester as and looks fine. Hope this helps!
I'm generating a html email that uses an internal stylesheet, i.e.
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
h2.foo {color: red}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h2 class="foo">Email content here</foo>
</body>
</html>
When viewed in Gmail it seems all the styles in the internal stylesheet are ignored. It seems Gmail ignores all styles other than inline rules, e.g.
<h2 style="color: red">Email content here</foo>
Is this my only option for styling HTML emails when viewed with Gmail?
Use inline styles for everything. This site will convert your classes to inline styles: http://premailer.dialect.ca/
The answers here are outdated, as of today Sep 30 2016. Gmail is currently rolling out support for the style tag in the head, as well as media queries. If Gmail is your only concern, you're safe to use classes like a modern developer!
For reference, you can check the official gmail CSS docs.
As a side note, Gmail was the only major client that didn't support style (reference, until they update anyway). That means you can almost safely stop putting styles inline. Some of the more obscure clients may still need them.
Gmail started basic support for style tags in the head area. Found nothing official yet but you can easily try it yourself.
It seems to ignore class and id selectors but basic element selectors work.
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<style type="text/css">
p{font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p>Email content here</p>
</body>
</html>
it will create a style tag in its own head area limited to the div containing the mail body
<style>div.m14623dcb877eef15 p{font-family:Tahoma,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0}</style>
I agree with everyone who supports classes AND inline styles. You might have learned this by now, but if there is a single mistake in your style sheet, Gmail will disregard it.
You might think that your CSS is perfect, because you've done it so often, why would I have mistakes in my CSS? Run it through the CSS Validator (for example http://www.css-validator.org/) and see what happens. I did that after encountering some Gmail display issues, and to my surprise, several Microsoft Outlook specific style declarations showed up as mistakes.
Which made sense to me, so I removed them from the style sheet and put them into a only for Microsoft code block, like so:
<!--[if mso]>
<style type="text/css">
body, table, td, .mobile-text {
font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important;
}
</style>
<xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
<o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml>
<![endif]-->
This is just a simple example, but, who know, it might come in handy some time.
Note that services and tools for sending emails may be able to inline your CSS for you, allowing CSS in <style> tags to work in Gmail.
For instance, if you're sending emails with MailChimp, your CSS from <style> tags will get inlined automatically by default. With Mandrill, you can enable this functionality (although it's disabled by default for performance reasons) by checking the "Inline CSS Styles in HTML Emails" box in the "Sending Defaults" section of the Settings tab:
As others have said, some email programs will not read the css styles. If you already have a web email written up you can use the following tool from zurb to inline all of your styles:
http://zurb.com/ink/inliner.php
This comes in extremely handy when using templates like those mentioned above from mailchimp, campaign monitor, etc. as they, as you have found, will not work in some email programs. This tool leaves your style section for the mail programs that will read it and puts all the styles inline to get more universal readability in the format that you wanted.
I had the same problem while designing a template in Mailjet. Solution of the problem was minified CSS code inside <style> tags.
#shawn did give an example how to use a combination of styling in the head section together with inline styling. Some email clients (Outlook, Gmail, etc.) have tricky things, these can be fixed with css in the head style.
The extra table <table width="580"> is for Outlook to solve 'width' problems and also to center the layout.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html style="border:none;" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">
<head>
<base target=_blank href="http://">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"/>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"/>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<meta name="x-apple-disable-message-reformatting"/>
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"/>
<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black"/>
<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no"/>
<title>
</title>
<link href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans#standard-styles" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>
<style type="text/css">
.ReadMsgBody { width:100%;background-color:#eeeeee }
.ExternalClass { width:100%;background-color:#eeeeee }
.ExternalClass, .ExternalClass p, .ExternalClass span, .ExternalClass font, .ExternalClass td, .ExternalClass div { line-height:100% }
a[x-apple-data-detectors] { color:inherit !important;text-decoration:none !important;font-size:inherit !important; font-family:inherit !important;font-weight:inherit !important;line-height:inherit !important }
div[style*="margin: 16px 0"] { margin:0 !important }
body { margin:0;padding:0;font-family:'Open Sans','Verdana',Geneva,sans-serif;-webkit-text-size-adjust:none;-ms-text-size-adjust:none }
#outlook a { padding:0 }
.yshortcuts a { border-bottom:none !important }
table,td { mso-table-lspace:0pt;mso-table-rspace:0pt }
table,tr,td { border-collapse:collapse }
tbody { width: 100% }
p,a,li,blockquote { mso-line-height-rule:exactly }
li { mso-margin-top-alt:0;mso-margin-bottom-alt:0 }
#media screen and (min-width: 600px) {
table.container {width: 580px !important; margin: 10px auto !important }
div.fullwidth { width: 580px !important }
div.halfwidth { width: 290px !important }
}
</style>
<!--[if gte mso 11]>
<style type="text/css">table {border-spacing: 0;}table td {border-collapse: separate;}</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if !mso]><!-->
<style type="text/css">table{border-spacing:0} table td{border-collapse:collapse}</style>
<!--<![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 15]>
<xml><o:OfficeDocumentSettings><o:AllowPNG/><o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch></o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
<xml><o:OfficeDocumentSettings><o:AllowPNG/><o:PixelsPerInch>96</o:PixelsPerInch></o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml>
<![endif]-->
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" style="width:100%; margin:0px; padding:0px; border:0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust:100%">
<!-- BODY TABLE -->
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%; max-width:100%; border-collapse:collapse; border-spacing:0; margin:0 auto; padding:0; border:0; background-color:#ffffff">
<tr>
<td width="100%" align="center" valign="top" style="padding:0px !important; border-collapse:collapse; border-spacing:0; border:0px; text-align:center; vertical-align:top; -webkit-text-size-adjust:100%;">
<!-- WRAPPER TABLE -->
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
<table width="580" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td>
<![endif]-->
<table class="container" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0; max-width: 580px; margin: 0 auto; background-color: #ffffff; border:1px solid #e7e7e7">
<tr>
<td class="font0" align="center" style="padding: 0 !important; font: normal 0px/0px sans-serif !important; font-size: 0px !important; border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0; border: 0; text-align: center; vertical-align: top;">
<!-- EACH CONTENT ROW AS BELOW -->
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
<table width="100%" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td>
<![endif]-->
<div class="fullwidth" style="width: 290px; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top;">
<table width="100%" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-spacing: 0;">
<tr>
<td style="padding: 20px 10px 0px 10px; font: normal 12px/16px sans-serif; color: #555454; text-align: left; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;">
YOUR CONTENT HERE
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
</td></tr></table>
<![endif]-->
<!-- END WRAPPER TABLE -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!--[if (gte mso 9)|(IE)]>
</td></tr></table>
<![endif]-->
<!-- END BODY TABLE -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Have updated the css and html as the answers indicate but unfortunately the style information is still not being passed to the td. The class is defined as limits but no style.
Having some trouble with something very basic.
HTML
<%= stylesheet_link_tag "test.css" %>
</head>
<body>
<table class="results">
<% #result.each do |object|%>
<tr>
<td class="limit"> <%= object%> </td>
</tr>
<%end%>
</table>
</body>
CSS
table.results
{
width: 100%;
border: .2em ridge #000000;
}
td.limit
{
width:50%;
background-color: #fff000;
border: .2em ridge #0f0f0f;
}
In the resulting output. the table which has its class defined outside the ruby loop has all its style attributes included fine.
However the TD inside the ruby for.each loop does not. Is there some specific way to add a class to a HTML element in Ruby?
output html table as requested
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Crawler</title>
<link href="/stylesheets/globalStyleSheet.css?1312383253" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/jquery.inputlimiter.1.0.css?1312464674" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link href="/stylesheets/test.css?1313055311" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<script src="/javascripts/prototype.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/effects.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/dragdrop.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/controls.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="/javascripts/rails.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<meta name="csrf-param" content="authenticity_token"/>
<meta name="csrf-token" content="fQ/oa3q+Aq68GZenV26YuwPjDgbijTeuO3VJihtYHI8="/>
</head>
<body>
<html>
<head>
<link href="/stylesheets/test.css?1313055311" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>
<table class="results">
<tr id="test-tr">
<td class="limit"> blag blah </td>
</tr>
<tr >
<td class="limit"> testing 45 </td>
</tr>
<tr >
<td class="limit"> testing</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</body>
</html>
You're missing a semicolon after the background-color property in the CSS for your td. That'll be knocking out both the background-color and border properties.
You may want to take advantage of the W3C CSS Validation Service for basic sanity checking of your CSS. In your case, it says:
td.limit Value Error : background-color attempt to find a semi-colon before the property name. add it
...which is a bit cryptic, I admit, but at least a reasonable pointer towards your problem.
It is not about Ruby or Rails at all.
You have got EXTRA space between class and ="limit"
<td class ="limit"> <%= object%> </td>
#=> should be
<td class="limit"><%= object %></td>