CODING HTML EMAILS — Yes this DOES suck
Per last week’s post, I was just starting to get into the details of coding up HTML emails, but hadn’t gotten a chance to really get my hands dirty. And while I still think it will be a very useful skill to have, I can now say from experience that coding HTML emails really does suck and really is dirty.
In HTML email creation, all of the core standards of today’s HTML and CSS pretty much get tossed out of the window. Coding with tables and rows is a bit like building a brick wall, so that when you make a change to one sections, the change can ripple down throughout the other sections and really screw things up. And while coding for cross-browser compatibility is the bane of most frontend devs’ existence, the problem is even worse on the email side (there are even more email clients). While I feel like I started getting the hang of it, I’m definitely still feeling something like this…
And to other devs, I’ll just say this…until you’ve really dug in and tried to do it yourself….
“I can do this” – building html/css pages
While the majority of our time was dedicated to building some HTML email templates, we also were tasked with building some simple landing pages for a client’s email preference center. This was a breath of fresh air. It certainly wasn’t the most challenging set of pages, but it was a good feeling to be able to take a mock-up and dive right in and code it up quite quickly. I was actually pretty amazed out how fast I was able to move on this one….something I definitely would have struggled to do last October. So, that process felt a bit more like…
where’s the programming? I need a challenge
One thing I felt missing from this last week’s workload was a serious programming challenge. Coding emails or landing pages is a different type of challenge, and is more about piecing together the right blocks, bits and pieces. I certainly don’t mind the front-end practice as I think it’s always good to keep up the front-end abilities. However, I definitely was yearning a bit for a slightly more challenging project. Next week, we’ll be adding some programming components to those landing pages and emails, so that should be a bit more interesting. I am definitely looking forward to making my brain work just a bit harder.
free lunch, free booze, ok!
As mentioned previously, Sailthru has a great culture…definitely in the “work hard, play hard” vein. This week, they brought back their weekly lunches and topped if off with another happy hour.
And after hours of staring at code adjusting tables and rows…
…that’s definitely a great break way to take a little break:
