What the E!

At church we are in the process of changing our church website and newsletter system to better communicate with new/prospective attenders and along with regular attenders/members.

As part of this we are likely going to implement a PHPList based weekly email newsletter. As part of the planning process for this upgrade I started exploring templates for use in PHPList. I quickly found a bigger challenge than I expected. Check out the link below and take a look at the chart across different mail clients.

Guide to CSS support in email clients 2008 - Articles & Tips - Campaign Monitor.

The list is crazy look at all the client/operating system combinations. This is my first time down this path, but even testing is challenging. For web based html you have a relatively limited number of mainstream browser/OS combination. Normally, the testing can be isolated to 2 or 3 main browsers and just a couple of operating systems. Even then there are several services that allow you to see how your website renders in a large number of different combination’s; my favorite being Browser Shots.

If you see a service like browershots for email message templates or have suggestions of tools, tips, or services please let me know.

I follow and read a number of other blogs, but this recent article from A List Apart is really cool.  I do some web design, mostly as a volunteer for non profits.  Most of my testing (I wont use the word designing) is done by the make a change and view in a couple browsers method.

This article was a real eye opener for me in ways to effectively manage what style sheets different browsers actually see.

A List Apart: Articles: Progressive Enhancement with CSS