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Mike Stockman wrote:
>
> The trouble with HTML e-mail is that, because there's no standard among
> mail readers, what looks good in Outlook can look like garbage in Eudora,
> Netscape Mail, etc. It's challenging, but not impossible, to design Web
> pages that meet the standard and look good in all major browsers; adding
> mail readers to the mix makes it impossible.
Well, other languages and character sets are a huge problem, of course.
But, sticking with English, the only real problem is AOL. AOL 6 is pretty good with HTML-formatted messages, but earlier versions were VERY limited in how they could handle HTML. AOL 5 (and probably 4) supported a few basic tags--B, I, and A HREF, if I remember correctly--but anything else was just mixed in with the text of the document.
Companies in the e-mail marketing sector have spent a great deal of energy developing HTML messages that look good in the vast majority of popular e-mail clients. Some of them have algorithms that detect a recipient's ability to read HTML-formatted messages, and substitute plain text for those that cannot. It's pretty cool stuff. :)
These companies have to test their output with a wide array of e-mail programs at every release to make sure it still looks good, or their customers would take their business elsewhere.
It's a lot of work, but it definitely isn't impossible.
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