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:
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