How to do a html Mailing list ?

[eluser]Clooner[/eluser]
I made a program inside my app to deliver html mails to my subscribers. This works just perfectly fine for mail programs like apple mail or outlook but if you use mobileme, gmail or any other web based app the messages get messed up. Are there any tricks, guidelines to make sure the mail is also correctly formatted in web based mail programs. I know about the alternative text message which is included in the mail library but I'm really looking for tips and tricks on how to improve the html side of my message.

[eluser]Clooner[/eluser]
After some more googling and research I found a good article on this : http://www.reachcustomersonline.com/2009.../09.27.00/

Maybe anyone has some more tips!

[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]
It is nearly impossible. Read through http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/

[eluser]BrianDHall[/eluser]
I gave up. LOL

Seriously, to make html mail readable in 'most' places you have to do absolutely barebones ancient-style HTML avoiding javascript and CSS, with some limited functionality available through inline styling (using style="" instead of 'proper' styling and such) - and then you must test it to see how it works.

You also need a design that doesn't rely on images, as those get blocked most of the time.

Even then you MUST, absolutey MUST, provide a text-only friendly version or you'll lose everyone who reads email through many cell phones such as blackberry (most such business users have text-only, regardless of their phones featuers), many corporate email services are set to filter html mail so that only text versions get delivered for security reasons, most government email systems are set to text-only support for security, GMail aggressively alters html mail in ways most other services don't, most online email services alter email in unpredictable ways, Cpanel webmail programs (SquirrelMail, RoundMail, Horde, etc) make html a weirdly named attachment no one ever looks at with the text-only version in the body, Outlook is the number one email reader in the world and either a) screws with html heavily or b) gets set to text-only preview or text-only totally by sensible administrators who don't want virus laden networks.

The result? You have to develop at least 2 emails, easily readable text-only and hacked html that never reliably looks like you want it to, just to send out an email. This ends up being an ass load of work, and you still end up with an unknown percentage (though with business to business applications the number is known to be very high text-only usage) will ever see the result of your extra work.

This led me to say "Screw it, ASCII it is!"

That being said, some people still do it. I know this because I still get a few horribly mangled HTML emails I make a token attempt to read from companies I otherwise like through my gmail.

At least I try to read a few of them, anyway - some I just hit "SPAM" button on because it annoys me to try to read them, and after a few such treatments I suddenly don't see them anymore.

[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]
I say, send an all image email with a plain text alternate. No sense in trying to get the layout perfect with tables. It's just too costly