July 1, 2010

Spotted: HTML 5 comes to email

So over the past 6 months or so, web designers have been getting to play around with HTML 5, which is an update on the HTML standard that natively includes features like controls for audio/video playback and drag and drop. Traditionally, these kind of things have required a mixture of javascript and plugins such as flash, and as a result have not been available in HTML email, primarily due to security concerns.

However as HTML 5 starts to be supported by email clients and web browsers, it opens up the doors for a much richer experience for the user, and allows marketers to experiment with things like scrolling product boxes, and video & audio with controls.

Recently different email client providers have been moving towards supporting this type of technology, particularly webmail clients, who have been adding HTML 5 doctypes to their pages (this was behind the recent Gmail/Firefox issue). This week’s announcement by Yahoo Mail builds on that – as they’ve just announced a beta version of their new HTML 5 Mobile Webmail for iPhone and iPod touch.

If you’re on an iPhone or iPod touch, you can access the new beta by visiting http://m.yahoo.com/mail and tapping on ‘Preview the new Yahoo! Mail’.

Looking at the beta on an iPhone 4 really shows what HTML 5 is capable of, and where email clients are going – it’s exciting!

Above: this is the inbox view – you can see a carousel of photo thumbnails, which have been rotated and had a drop shadow added. You can gesture left and right to scroll through photos. These are custom published, so these are from my friends on flickr.

Below: there’s a similar view at the top of the email itself

Below: Here’s what’s really clever – when you click/thumb an image it opens into a nice lightbox style preview:

Around the web: Recent Email Marketing blog posts

Marketing Agency Jobs in Central London at e-Dialog

http://twitter.com/emailvoodoo EmailMarketingVoodoo

I am so excited about the potential adoption of HTML5 in email. It is likely to become a HUGE game-changer for how we marketers think about and approach email marketing in the future. I believe that each email you send out to users on mobile devices could be a mini–iPhone-app-like experience, as you’ve illustrated above with the Flickr example.
- Shauffhausen
  
  Shame 90% of email clients can’t properly render regular HTML with any form of industry standards…
  
  We’re still designing with inline css (80% of which isn’t supported browser-wide), outlook is using its word browser to display html, can’t use div’s properly, no background images, etc. etc…
  
  And we’re supposed to be excited about html video? Sorry, but i see no discussion on html 5 email browser standards. Why is this not important? Email html is a complete mess at the moment.
  - http://www.elliot-ross.co.uk Elliot Ross
    
    you’re absolutely right – the Email Standards Project championed this to a degree, but it seems to have gone quiet on that front recently. Microsoft’s insistence on continuing to use the word engine is increasingly becoming the major sticking point, as other clients (particularly webmail and mac based ones) shift towards better HTML5/CSS support.
    
    Incidentally I know the W3C did some initial exploration around email coding standards a few years ago, but that unfortunately stalled soon afterwards.
    - Shauffhausen
      
      It’s very sad – Email has been around since the beginning of the web yet for some reason it has been completely neglected in terms of standards and attention.
      
      Look at the mobile web – There are standards for mobile web environments already in fruition… I simply do not understand why this has overtaken email standards already.
      - Josh Mouch
        
        I think two of the big problems are 1) webmail clients need to maintain a consistent experience/sandbox and 2) can’t allow spammers/scammers to be allowed to abuse the HTML.
  - rawraj
    
    The major reason why emails only support inline css is they don’t want marketers “rebranding” the entire interface.
    Thats why Outlook removes backgrounds, and does not allow divs(rather absolutely positioned div.
    A good CSS designer could simply rebrand each and every aspect of the email. make their newletter appear in fullscreen and what not. Coca-cola could turn gmail into a red theme with cokecola backgrounds and even replace the logo.
    So its really a dilemma for these email clients. More so spammers could displace emails in fullscreen that are unescapable remember 10 years ago in IE you had such popups which you could not close(or a novice could not, you had to use alt-F4)
    So unless there is a way to stop newletter from totally “rebranding” the email client/interface, I don’t think we will ever see a fullfledged acceptence of any language in emails
http://twitter.com/emailvoodoo EmailMarketingVoodoo

I am so excited about the potential adoption of HTML5 in email. It is likely to become a HUGE game-changer for how we marketers think about and approach email marketing in the future. I believe that each email you send out to users on mobile devices could be a mini–iPhone-app-like experience, as you've illustrated above with the Flickr example.
- Shauffhausen
  
  Shame 90% of email clients can't properly render regular HTML with any form of industry standards…
  
  We're still designing with inline css (80% of which isn't supported browser-wide), outlook is using its word browser to display html, can't use div's properly, no background images, etc. etc…
  
  And we're supposed to be excited about html video? Sorry, but i see no discussion on html 5 email browser standards. Why is this not important? Email html is a complete mess at the moment.
  - http://www.emaildesignreview.com/ Elliot // Email Design Review
    
    you're absolutely right – the Email Standards Project championed this to a degree, but it seems to have gone quiet on that front recently. Microsoft's insistence on continuing to use the word engine is increasingly becoming the major sticking point, as other clients (particularly webmail and mac based ones) shift towards better HTML5/CSS support.
    
    Incidentally I know the W3C did some initial exploration around email coding standards a few years ago, but that unfortunately stalled soon afterwards.
    - Shauffhausen
      
      It's very sad – Email has been around since the beginning of the web yet for some reason it has been completely neglected in terms of standards and attention.
      
      Look at the mobile web – There are standards for mobile web environments already in fruition… I simply do not understand why this has overtaken email standards already.
      - Josh Mouch
        
        I think two of the big problems are 1) webmail clients need to maintain a consistent experience/sandbox and 2) can’t allow spammers/scammers to be allowed to abuse the HTML.
  - rawraj
    
    The major reason why emails only support inline css is they don't want marketers “rebranding” the entire interface.
    Thats why Outlook removes backgrounds, and does not allow divs(rather absolutely positioned div.
    A good CSS designer could simply rebrand each and every aspect of the email. make their newletter appear in fullscreen and what not. Coca-cola could turn gmail into a red theme with cokecola backgrounds and even replace the logo.
    So its really a dilemma for these email clients. More so spammers could displace emails in fullscreen that are unescapable remember 10 years ago in IE you had such popups which you could not close(or a novice could not, you had to use alt-F4)
    So unless there is a way to stop newletter from totally “rebranding” the email client/interface, I don't think we will ever see a fullfledged acceptence of any language in emails
http://www.elliot-ross.co.uk Elliot Ross

you’re absolutely right – the Email Standards Project championed this to a degree, but it seems to have gone quiet on that front recently. Microsoft’s insistence on continuing to use the word engine is increasingly becoming the major sticking point, as other clients (particularly webmail and mac based ones) shift towards better HTML5/CSS support.

Incidentally I know the W3C did some initial exploration around email coding standards a few years ago, but that unfortunately stalled soon afterwards.
http://www.elliot-ross.co.uk Elliot Ross

you’re absolutely right – the Email Standards Project championed this to a degree, but it seems to have gone quiet on that front recently. Microsoft’s insistence on continuing to use the word engine is increasingly becoming the major sticking point, as other clients (particularly webmail and mac based ones) shift towards better HTML5/CSS support.

Incidentally I know the W3C did some initial exploration around email coding standards a few years ago, but that unfortunately stalled soon afterwards.
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Spotted: HTML 5 comes to email

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