HTML standard for email newsletter design

[abcat]

Hi,

I have some questions on designing email newsletter in HTML.

1. Is there a standard to follow when designing HTML newsletter for eg. (avoid div using table)?
2. Any website can validate my HTML codes for email?
3. Any websites can show how it will look like in different mail eg. (gmail, yahoo mail and hotmail)?

As most of the email I converted into HTML displayed differently on different mail server. I hope someone can enlighten me on my above questions.

Thanks

[tr333]

I don't think there's much you can do here, without testing explicitly on each platform. Most HTML generated by e-mail software would make you think you're back in 1999 with all the <FONT> tags, etc. Outlook is especially bad at this, unless it's improved in the latest version.

Are you sure that HTML is 100% required for this? Keep in mind that people might view your e-mails on devices or software that doesn't support HTML e-mail.

[abcat]

thanks for the reply, i just want to ensure that all those major client like outlook, gmail, yahoo mail and hotmail can display correctly, and even mobile.

do you have any other suggestion beside html? Sometimes I can use pure image but at times there is some place where there is different hyperlink, hence i only thought of using html.

[tr333]

If you're going to use HTML, then I would suggest also including an alternate plain text part in the e-mail for the non-html readers. Your only option will be to do manual testing in each of these e-mail clients, either doing it yourself or finding other people with the required software to help you out. I've never heard of any automated software to do this (unlike what you would get from browsershots when testing webpages).

[abcat]

thanks for your suggestions and advice