html: The Email Standards Project

You think coding for web browsers is tricky, try e-newsletter coding!

With a variety of software based email clients like Outlook, through to the many different web-based solutions such as gmail and yahoo, it is becoming nigh on impossible to code the perfect HTML email, but before you ditch that great new e-newsletter campaign and resort to the good old days of plain-text, there is a light at the end of the e-tunnel.

The Email Standards Project are attempting to "improve web standards support and accessibility in email", and deserve a beer from every web designer and programmer out there if they achieve their stated objective:

"Our goal is to help designers understand why web standards are so important for email, while working with email client developers to ensure that emails render consistently. This is a community effort to improve the email experience for both designers and readers alike."

While they go about trying to achieve this herculean task, you can make use of their site to see which email program developers to strike off your Christmas card list, or perhaps to see which standards are supported by the offenders at Gmail, Microsoft, Hotmail, Apple and Lotus in order to ensure that your e-newsletter still looks the business.