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HTML emails
by matt connolly
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I haven't looked at drupal 7 yet, so I'm throwing this out there for discussion.
The D6 mail api seems like it's pretty much designed for plain text emails, however, a module's implementation of hook_mail can clearly set the headers of the mail to "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8" and send rich text. For example, I'm looking at using "forward" module for the "email this page" link on a node, and the "simplenews" module, which uses "mimemail" to send rich emails, including attachments. Both "forward" and "mimemail" modules create a html header. The problem occurs when a module implements "drupal_mail_wrapper()" to build a html header when hook_mail has already done that - you can easily end up with bodies like: <!doctype... <-- from drupal_mail_wrapper() <html> <head>...</head> <body><div.... <!doctype. <-- from hook_mail() <html> <head> ... etc. Because there are two opportunities to create the html "head" for the message: in hook_mail and drupal_mail_wrapper. I'm throwing this out there for discussion, I think that the hook_mail should construct the message in a similar fashion to the Form API, specifying a theme for rendering the body part of the message (ie what goes in the <body> tag) and anything special that needs to go in the head as attributes. That way the message can be constructed only once. Besides, email clients have been HTML friendly for a *long* time, so I don't see why Drupal shouldn't have an interface that understands rich email messages. Thoughts? Matt |
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Re: HTML emails
by Omar Abdel-Wahab-3
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+1
I strongly would love to have D7 send HTML e-mails. At least 20 modules will benefit from this step. Omar Matt Connolly wrote: > I haven't looked at drupal 7 yet, so I'm throwing this out there for > discussion. > > The D6 mail api seems like it's pretty much designed for plain text > emails, however, a module's implementation of hook_mail can clearly set > the headers of the mail to "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8" and > send rich text. > > For example, I'm looking at using "forward" module for the "email this > page" link on a node, and the "simplenews" module, which uses "mimemail" > to send rich emails, including attachments. Both "forward" and > "mimemail" modules create a html header. > > The problem occurs when a module implements "drupal_mail_wrapper()" to > build a html header when hook_mail has already done that - you can > easily end up with bodies like: > > <!doctype... <-- from drupal_mail_wrapper() > <html> > <head>...</head> > <body><div.... > <!doctype. <-- from hook_mail() > <html> > <head> ... etc. > > > Because there are two opportunities to create the html "head" for the > message: in hook_mail and drupal_mail_wrapper. > > I'm throwing this out there for discussion, I think that the hook_mail > should construct the message in a similar fashion to the Form API, > specifying a theme for rendering the body part of the message (ie what > goes in the <body> tag) and anything special that needs to go in the > head as attributes. > > That way the message can be constructed only once. > > Besides, email clients have been HTML friendly for a *long* time, so I > don't see why Drupal shouldn't have an interface that understands rich > email messages. > > Thoughts? > > > Matt > > |
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Re: HTML emails
by Marolijo - Pol maresma
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I tried it but nothing...
Where on the database can I delete the module references? Will it work? Thank's -----Mensaje original----- De: development-bounces@... [mailto:development-bounces@...] En nombre de Omar Abdel-Wahab Enviado el: dimecres, 16 / juliol / 2008 11:23 Para: development@... Asunto: Re: [development] HTML emails +1 I strongly would love to have D7 send HTML e-mails. At least 20 modules will benefit from this step. Omar Matt Connolly wrote: > I haven't looked at drupal 7 yet, so I'm throwing this out there for > discussion. > > The D6 mail api seems like it's pretty much designed for plain text > emails, however, a module's implementation of hook_mail can clearly > set the headers of the mail to "Content-Type: text/html; > charset=utf-8" and send rich text. > > For example, I'm looking at using "forward" module for the "email this > page" link on a node, and the "simplenews" module, which uses "mimemail" > to send rich emails, including attachments. Both "forward" and > "mimemail" modules create a html header. > > The problem occurs when a module implements "drupal_mail_wrapper()" to > build a html header when hook_mail has already done that - you can > easily end up with bodies like: > > <!doctype... <-- from drupal_mail_wrapper() <html> <head>...</head> > <body><div.... > <!doctype. <-- from hook_mail() > <html> > <head> ... etc. > > > Because there are two opportunities to create the html "head" for the > message: in hook_mail and drupal_mail_wrapper. > > I'm throwing this out there for discussion, I think that the hook_mail > should construct the message in a similar fashion to the Form API, > specifying a theme for rendering the body part of the message (ie what > goes in the <body> tag) and anything special that needs to go in the > head as attributes. > > That way the message can be constructed only once. > > Besides, email clients have been HTML friendly for a *long* time, so I > don't see why Drupal shouldn't have an interface that understands rich > email messages. > > Thoughts? > > > Matt > > __________ Información de NOD32, revisión 3270 (20080715) __________ Este mensaje ha sido analizado con NOD32 antivirus system http://www.nod32.com |
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Re: HTML emails
by Marolijo - Pol maresma
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Sorry, I'd replyed incorrect mail...
-----Mensaje original----- De: development-bounces@... [mailto:development-bounces@...] En nombre de marolijo - Pol Maresma Enviado el: dimecres, 16 / juliol / 2008 11:36 Para: development@... Asunto: Re: [development] HTML emails I tried it but nothing... Where on the database can I delete the module references? Will it work? Thank's -----Mensaje original----- De: development-bounces@... [mailto:development-bounces@...] En nombre de Omar Abdel-Wahab Enviado el: dimecres, 16 / juliol / 2008 11:23 Para: development@... Asunto: Re: [development] HTML emails +1 I strongly would love to have D7 send HTML e-mails. At least 20 modules will benefit from this step. Omar Matt Connolly wrote: > I haven't looked at drupal 7 yet, so I'm throwing this out there for > discussion. > > The D6 mail api seems like it's pretty much designed for plain text > emails, however, a module's implementation of hook_mail can clearly > set the headers of the mail to "Content-Type: text/html; > charset=utf-8" and send rich text. > > For example, I'm looking at using "forward" module for the "email this > page" link on a node, and the "simplenews" module, which uses "mimemail" > to send rich emails, including attachments. Both "forward" and > "mimemail" modules create a html header. > > The problem occurs when a module implements "drupal_mail_wrapper()" to > build a html header when hook_mail has already done that - you can > easily end up with bodies like: > > <!doctype... <-- from drupal_mail_wrapper() <html> <head>...</head> > <body><div.... > <!doctype. <-- from hook_mail() > <html> > <head> ... etc. > > > Because there are two opportunities to create the html "head" for the > message: in hook_mail and drupal_mail_wrapper. > > I'm throwing this out there for discussion, I think that the hook_mail > should construct the message in a similar fashion to the Form API, > specifying a theme for rendering the body part of the message (ie what > goes in the <body> tag) and anything special that needs to go in the > head as attributes. > > That way the message can be constructed only once. > > Besides, email clients have been HTML friendly for a *long* time, so I > don't see why Drupal shouldn't have an interface that understands rich > email messages. > > Thoughts? > > > Matt > > __________ Información de NOD32, revisión 3270 (20080715) __________ Este mensaje ha sido analizado con NOD32 antivirus system http://www.nod32.com __________ Información de NOD32, revisión 3270 (20080715) __________ Este mensaje ha sido analizado con NOD32 antivirus system http://www.nod32.com |
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Re: HTML emails
by Nathaniel Catchpole-2
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There's a patch here that's not had much attention for over a year but would provide better support in core: http://drupal.org/node/28604
You should also look at http://drupal.org/project/mimemail Nat On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Omar Abdel-Wahab wrote: +1 |
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Re: HTML emails
by Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
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On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:22:49 +0300
Omar Abdel-Wahab <owahab@...> wrote: > +1 > > I strongly would love to have D7 send HTML e-mails. > > At least 20 modules will benefit from this step. What would be really lovely would be support both. The only way I've found to turn HTML into "formatted" text was to pipe HTML through w3m. Not a scalable solution. I haven't found any library that could render HTML to text in a decent way. -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it |
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Re: HTML emails
by Marolijo - Pol maresma
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Thank's!
Solved updating to the new beta version and recreating manually the tables. -----Mensaje original----- De: development-bounces@... [mailto:development-bounces@...] En nombre de Ivan Sergio Borgonovo Enviado el: dimecres, 16 / juliol / 2008 12:04 Para: development@... Asunto: Re: [development] HTML emails On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:22:49 +0300 Omar Abdel-Wahab <owahab@...> wrote: > +1 > > I strongly would love to have D7 send HTML e-mails. > > At least 20 modules will benefit from this step. What would be really lovely would be support both. The only way I've found to turn HTML into "formatted" text was to pipe HTML through w3m. Not a scalable solution. I haven't found any library that could render HTML to text in a decent way. -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it __________ Informacisn de NOD32, revisisn 3270 (20080715) __________ Este mensaje ha sido analizado con NOD32 antivirus system http://www.nod32.com |
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Re: HTML emails
by matt connolly
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Yes, I am trying to use "mimemail", just ported the code to Drupal 6 yesterday.
The problem is that other modules that don't use mimemail duplicate some of its functionality, which makes sense when the module is not present. At the moment, I'm manually re-theming the other modules to not create "<html><head>" stuff to play nice with mimemail. Ideally, though, you could set html head elements in an array in a similar fashion to for FORM API so that mimemail (or any HTML aware drupal mail module) could interpret and include in the constructed email message in the correct place. ie: returning a structured array instead of a flat string. Although this may be contrary to how theme functions work... It makes sense to me that modules should only create the content that goes in a <DIV> tag, just like building a block on the page. However, many modules call drupal_add_css or drupal_add_js which ultimately gets added to the page when it's rendered. I think email generation should have the same ability to include CSS files (which should go in the <HEAD> tag, not a <DIV>) I notice that mimemail does in fact get the CSS files from drupal and the current theme (in the absence of a mail.css file) so you can simply call drupal_add_cs() from a theme function that generates email.... just confusing if you're generating an email, and then a resulting page at the same time..... -Matt On 16/07/2008, at 10:46 AM, Nathaniel Catchpole wrote:
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Re: HTML emails
by Lluís Forns Puigmartí-2
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A problem with HTML mails and CSS is that they don't render the same
in all mail clients. I have searched a way to convert CSS page into pure HTML (without CSS) before sending it, but I didn't found any way to do so. Maybe something like http://wiki.tcl.tk/12383 but for PHP would make sent mails look better. On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Matt Connolly <matt@...> wrote: > Yes, I am trying to use "mimemail", just ported the code to Drupal 6 > yesterday. > The problem is that other modules that don't use mimemail duplicate some of > its functionality, which makes sense when the module is not present. > At the moment, I'm manually re-theming the other modules to not create > "<html><head>" stuff to play nice with mimemail. > Ideally, though, you could set html head elements in an array in a similar > fashion to for FORM API so that mimemail (or any HTML aware drupal mail > module) could interpret and include in the constructed email message in the > correct place. ie: returning a structured array instead of a flat string. > Although this may be contrary to how theme functions work... > > > It makes sense to me that modules should only create the content that goes > in a <DIV> tag, just like building a block on the page. However, many > modules call drupal_add_css or drupal_add_js which ultimately gets added to > the page when it's rendered. I think email generation should have the same > ability to include CSS files (which should go in the <HEAD> tag, not a > <DIV>) > I notice that mimemail does in fact get the CSS files from drupal and the > current theme (in the absence of a mail.css file) so you can simply call > drupal_add_cs() from a theme function that generates email.... just > confusing if you're generating an email, and then a resulting page at the > same time..... > > -Matt > > On 16/07/2008, at 10:46 AM, Nathaniel Catchpole wrote: > > There's a patch here that's not had much attention for over a year but would > provide better support in core: http://drupal.org/node/28604 > > You should also look at http://drupal.org/project/mimemail > > Nat > > On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 10:22 AM, Omar Abdel-Wahab wrote: >> >> +1 >> >> I strongly would love to have D7 send HTML e-mails. >> >> At least 20 modules will benefit from this step. >> >> Omar >> >> Matt Connolly wrote: >>> >>> I haven't looked at drupal 7 yet, so I'm throwing this out there for >>> discussion. >>> >>> The D6 mail api seems like it's pretty much designed for plain text >>> emails, however, a module's implementation of hook_mail can clearly set the >>> headers of the mail to "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8" and send >>> rich text. >>> >>> For example, I'm looking at using "forward" module for the "email this >>> page" link on a node, and the "simplenews" module, which uses "mimemail" to >>> send rich emails, including attachments. Both "forward" and "mimemail" >>> modules create a html header. >>> >>> The problem occurs when a module implements "drupal_mail_wrapper()" to >>> build a html header when hook_mail has already done that - you can easily >>> end up with bodies like: >>> >>> <!doctype... <-- from drupal_mail_wrapper() >>> <html> >>> <head>...</head> >>> <body><div.... >>> <!doctype. <-- from hook_mail() >>> <html> >>> <head> ... etc. >>> >>> >>> Because there are two opportunities to create the html "head" for the >>> message: in hook_mail and drupal_mail_wrapper. >>> >>> I'm throwing this out there for discussion, I think that the hook_mail >>> should construct the message in a similar fashion to the Form API, >>> specifying a theme for rendering the body part of the message (ie what goes >>> in the <body> tag) and anything special that needs to go in the head as >>> attributes. >>> >>> That way the message can be constructed only once. >>> >>> Besides, email clients have been HTML friendly for a *long* time, so I >>> don't see why Drupal shouldn't have an interface that understands rich email >>> messages. >>> >>> Thoughts? >>> >>> >>> Matt >>> >>> > > > -- *La vida és com una moneda, la pots gastar en el que vulguis però només una vegada. *La felicitat ha de ser compatible, compartible i cooperativa. *Envellim quan els records superen les il·lusions. *Als llocs desconeguts només s'hi arriba per camins desconeguts. *Abans d'imprimir aquest missatge, pensa en el medi ambient. |
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Re: HTML emails
by Larry Garfield
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On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:12:33 +0100, Matt Connolly <matt@...> wrote: > Besides, email clients have been HTML friendly for a *long* time, so I > don't see why Drupal shouldn't have an interface that understands rich > email messages. > > Thoughts? > > > Matt I am going to take the luddite position. Consider yourself warned. :-) HTML email is not, as far as I am aware, an actual standard. It is a de facto convention for a hack of the SMTP protocol using a tool that was never built for it. It also breaks nearly every convention of email usage (at least as far as replies are involved), and wastes gobs and gobs of bandwidth, especially for the increasing number of people on mobile devices. It serves no purpose except to send spam (both legit and not, I am going to call all marketing emails spam even if they are solicited as a debate tactic), which means it is filtered out by mail servers more frequently. They are also a wonderful attack vector for viruses and trojans. As a result, many many email clients don't render HTML email by default, showing a blob of unrecognizable HTML instead. Some moronic mail senders send out HTML emails that have no plaintext version, which makes them unreadable to many people (who do not, in fact, accept HTML email). As others have mentioned, support for anything pos t-HTML 3.2 in email varies widely, and you can't exactly do client targeting over email. Why should we encourage that? As far as I'm concerned, we shouldn't. That said, there may well be advantages to switching to drupal_render() for email messages. I am in general a big fan of structured data remaining structured for as long as possible. The benefit, however, would not be for HTML mail but for, say, easier email attachments. That such a move would make it easier to send HTML email as well, well, that's a side effect I suppose we can live with. </rant> --Larry Garfield |
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Re: HTML emails
by Darrel O'Pry-2
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On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 5:12 AM, Matt Connolly <matt@...> wrote:
Have you even tried to make an HTML email look the same in multiple email clients? That stuff is impossible... and forget it if you want colored anchors or css support consistently. Heck they don't even send mime attachments consistently... They all do something close to spec... and lets not even get into the quirks of various webmail clients and the pluthera of different versions of MS Outlook in the wild and still supported by MS. You basically have a minimum of 8 different applications that handle HTML slightly differently. There are also major variations per version... If you thought cross browser support was annoying you haven't seen anything yet... apple: mac mail windows: outlook 8 -> present, including express variations. // each outlook seems to use a different combination renderer and mime library. linux: evolution cross platform: eudora mac, eudora pc, thunderbird web: gmail, windows live/hotmail, yahoo but using drupal_render ++ .darrel. |
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Re: HTML emails
by Stefan Nagtegaal-6
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Op 16 jul 2008, om 18:06 heeft Darrel O'Pry het volgende geschreven:
It isn't impossible! Just use CSS and make sure you have a wrapper div around your HTML-layout, styled with the CSS. The only thing that breaks your e-mails along the different e-mail clients is when you add styling to the <body>...</body> of your HTML e-mail. Stefan |
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Re: HTML emails
by Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
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On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 9:59:01 -0500
Larry Garfield <larry@...> wrote: > That said, there may well be advantages to switching to > drupal_render() for email messages. I am in general a big fan of > structured data remaining structured for as long as possible. The I really really would like to avoid HTML emails and I agree with most of your points and they are enough to hate html emails. Anyway it is a very frequently requested feature. I know consistency of rendering of HTML is a hell... but it is still a very frequent request we have to live with. We have a rendering engine that is specialised to render HTML. Even if mobile devices are getting more and more popular, they are getting more and more able to render html as it is. Template system makes much easier to delegate design tasks to non programmers compared to XLS/XML/whatever and building up a more flexible rendering engine may take a long time... why not just provide a way to build up structured emails (attachment, auto inclusion of CSS etc...) and something that just do html2text? BTW I didn't find html2text up to the task. w3m provided the best results in the tools I've used... but there is no w3m library that I know that can be easily integrated in php. Rewriting a text browser in php doesn't look to be easy. -- Ivan Sergio Borgonovo http://www.webthatworks.it |
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Re: HTML emails
by Eric-Alexander Schaefer
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Larry Garfield schrieb:
> I am going to take the luddite position. Consider yourself warned. :-) Thanks (for your position, not the warning). Plaintext should be the default and HTML _could_ be an option. If HTML is used, it should contain a plaintext version. Eric |
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Re: HTML emails
by Allie Micka
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On Jul 16, 2008, at 5:32 AM, Matt Connolly wrote: > At the moment, I'm manually re-theming the other modules to not > create "<html><head>" stuff to play nice with mimemail. If there's a generalizeable way to do this, I'd be a huge fan of its implementation. Please see http://drupal.org/node/ 121849#comment-915935 for a description of how messages are themed and how to override them. The goal here was to have something that looks consistent without creating a giant themeing task for admins and users; and without any knowledge or assumptions of how a site is themed. By default, Mime Mail includes copies of your CSS information inside of your message's <head> section. In many cases this looks pretty great, but it can lead to some darn large messages. Also, as indicated here, several mail clients don't read the CSS information in the head section. Mostly, this just means gmail and hotmail - see http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/ It would be super-awesome if someone could help this module - for everyone - by a) attempting to reduce the overall size of included CSS content and b) attempt to migrate some element and style definitions into the body of the message to combat the "gmail problem" Thanks, Allie Micka Advantage Labs, Inc. |
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Re: HTML emails
by Allie Micka
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> That said, there may well be advantages to switching to
> drupal_render() for email messages. +1 Also, I think it's more than appropriate to keep HTML-formatting and Mime machinations out of core. However, Drupal can't go around assuming that messages *won't* be HTML until it's ready to send them out, and then do its html-to-text conversion then. Thanks! Allie Micka Advantage Labs, Inc. |
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Re: HTML emails
by Bugzilla from ben.lewis@benl.co.uk
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Eric-Alexander Schaefer wrote:
> Larry Garfield schrieb: >> I am going to take the luddite position. Consider yourself warned. :-) > > Thanks (for your position, not the warning). > Plaintext should be the default and HTML _could_ be an option. If HTML > is used, it should contain a plaintext version. It MUST contain a plaintext version (per RFC 2119 [1]) [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119 > > Eric -- Benjamin Lewis Fedora Ambassador ben.lewis@... ----------------------------------------------------------------------- http://benl.co.uk./ |
