Email Ready HTML.fwaction

max fancourt 18 Feb 2009, 22:33

I forgot to say…If you want to add, adjust or have a suggestion please let me know.. :o)

Michael Strauss 20 Feb 2009, 14:22

OK…this looks very interesting. I am doing a lot of web blasts for my company and I use freeway to make them up, but it is very painful since i have to use lowest of HTML in freeway…

So what you are saying here is that I can use CSS and all of its goodness in freeway, apply this action to it, then bring the code to textwrangler and it will output the same look but no CSS in the code?

Please help me understand this a little bit more…

Michael Strauss 20 Feb 2009, 14:22

I'm sorry I meant "Textmate"

max fancourt 20 Feb 2009, 15:26

HI Micheal …well yes and no.. you still need to build the email properly. So thats.. tables and not layers (blue button turned off) no external style sheet and no IE compatibility in the document setup… but it does allow you to use HTML 4 HOOORAY and styling in the normal way. So you can create a normal style, like a font, colour, size, leading etc and then apply that style to some text in the normal way. what the action does is remove elements that cant be used which is the automatic inserted like the outer div. I then moves the styles so they are inside the body rather than in the head, I have also added the alignment center function too, as the normal method of aligniong a page is removed along with the deleted outer div. At this stage you could use the output if you wanted.

The TextMate bundle takes this one step further and moves all those styles and places them as inline styles. Which technically means no externally referenced styles at all.

If you have an email address I can send the full description to you (or any one else) a proper overview plus an idea on how to install the TextMate bundle into TextMate and then a little idea on how to use that too

all the best Max

Michael Strauss 23 Feb 2009, 13:41

Max, WOW, sounds amazing, please email everything!

[email protected]

sounds like its just what I have been looking for…

thanks Michael

Tony Allsopp 1 May 2009, 09:23

Hi Max, I'm struggling to get my head around how to put together HTML emails so if you could email me all the info you mentioned above it would be MUCH appreciated! Cheers Tony

max fancourt 1 May 2009, 09:35

Hi tony I am on an email at the moment so the minute I am done I will send it through speak soon max

Gregoire levy-duplat 4 Aug 2009, 22:48

Hello max, I'm Greg, I'm very interested for you new Email Ready HTML… So I've downloaded your action to test it. And when I'm trying to preview in safari (normally I could read my page on safari of course) I get just a blank page. I'm not of my explanation, english is not my mother tong. When I try to disabled the box in the action window, I try to preview, and it works. I maybe do something wrong. Could you help me ? thanks

max fancourt 5 Aug 2009, 11:00

Hi Greg if you can send me your email address I can send you some examples on how to prepare the artwork before you apply the action

PS remember to download the latest version as it's been updated today.

max

Gregoire levy-duplat 6 Aug 2009, 09:27

hi max, [email protected], thanks a lot.

Richard Lowther 30 Oct 2009, 18:01

Hi I am building an email using your action and will upload it to a directory on the associated web site. I note I have to not use IE compatabilityy. Will this be detrimental to the rest of the site?

If you still have the info referred to above I would welcome seeing it.

Best wishes Richard Lowther [email protected]

max fancourt 30 Oct 2009, 18:30

Hi richard you can leave that on if you want because the reference for that is removed by the action. As far as effecting the rest of the site then no this email should be created separately from the rest of the site and shouldn't make any difference.

al the best max

Richard Lowther 31 Oct 2009, 18:12

HI and thanks. I realised pretty soon after sending that I can un-check the IE on a page by page basis. I have been running some tests, sending them by Chimpmail. All almost OK so far, be it your example (2nd one) or one I built myself.

Yahoo mail will not show images. In safari they are replaced by question marks, in firefox as torn icon. (Show all images is selected in Yahoo options.) Yahoo on i phone just shows plain text. I will root around the yahoo support to see if I am not setting it up properly.

Mail, Thunderbird, gmail all fine. Fine too on an old PC with outlook express or looking at gmail in IE6.
On an iPhone? - Mail shows images. Gmail did well with my very basic layout of photos+text but stuggled with your more complex image, docking the photo and moving the styled text about a bit.

I will keep testing but would still be interested in any info you have. I am not using the Text Mate option as I do not have it. Is this step possible with Text Wrangler?

Best wishes

Richard

max fancourt 31 Oct 2009, 20:16

HI Richard you may want to try out campaign monitor.. its similar to Chimpmail and its about the same cost per email, it sorts out the the images for you an you can also place all the styles as inline items… if you wanted me to look at the email let me know all the best max

Richard Lowther 2 Nov 2009, 14:27

Hi Max, thanks for the tip - I am looking at campaign monitor and will test that out when I have time and/when/if my client becomes more enthusiastic! Will also take up your offer on looking at the mail once we have one. Best wishes Richard

Jamie Jones 10 Dec 2009, 19:59

I don't seem to be able to apply your action EMAIL Ready HHML to my Freeway 5 Pro pages that I want to set up as an email newsletter.

I have a thread running on the freetalk pages if you are able to offer any help

Thanks

Richard Lowther 19 Jan 2010, 11:04

Hi Max -me again. I have looked and tested Campaign monitor which does show the images in Yahoo. I would like to add to the mail the usual links 'view in web browser' and unsubscribe but in french. The support page tells me I can personalise by adding tags to my HTML eg <webversion>your content here</webversion> and <unsubscribe>your content here</unsubscribe>. Is this possible in FV and if so do you have any advice or guidance? I am going to post similar query on the forum too to see if any one out there can help.

Any help much appreciated - Richard

Richard Lowther 19 Jan 2010, 11:07

Hmm my last message took out the example tags. Does it work like the forum with <webversion>your content here</webversion> and ~~~ <unsubscribe>your content here</unsubscribe>~~~

Richard Lowther 19 Jan 2010, 11:12

No OK lets try "webversion"your content here"/webversion" and "unsubscribe"your content here"/unsubscribe" . the quotes have replaced the back and forward arrows used in tags. Hope this is not getting tedious for you!

max fancourt 23 Oct 2010, 19:41

Hi this action is not going to be developed any further because Freeway 5.5 comes with a superb email action

but for anyone who hasn't upgraded you still can use this action but I would recommend that if you do a few emails it would be advantageous to upgrade to 5.5

As a quick guide on how this action works its applied to a freeway page and it will remove the page div and move the styles to within the head plus it removes all the meta information which again is not supported by email programmes

The owners is still on you to create the table based email properly but it does move the styles and it removes all the items that wont work within the email programes