Re: [PHP] Sending pretty email
At 07:49 AM 3/11/01 , Richard Scott Crawford wrote:
The first thing to do is to take two aspirin and lie down until the
temptation to do this passes. It may be cool, but those of us who use
Eudora or Pine for our e-mail don't read HTML-encoded mail, don't *want*
to read HTML-encoded mail, and get really annoyed when it shows up in our
mailboxes.
I generally agree, but there is...
ONE GOOD USE FOR HTML EMAIL: AOL DUMMIES.
REASON:
When I would send my email list a URL I needed them to go to, I would do it
in plain-text. ("Go to www.something.com and do something.")
And because 90% of the email programs out there automatically make it a
hyperlinked URL, there was no problem - *EXCEPT* the AOL people who would
email back stupid things like, "Sounds interesting! What's the web address?"
SOLUTION:
When you're sending email using PHP, try this:
if (strtolower(strstr($email, '@'))=="aol.com")
{
$link1 = 'a href="http://www.something.com/"www.something.com/a';
$link2 = 'a href="http://www.otherthing.com/"www.otherthing.com/a';
}
else
{
$link1 = 'www.something.com';
$link2 = 'www.otherthing.com';
}
$message = "Hey $firstname -
Check out this link!
" . $link1 . "
and also this one...
" . $link2 . "
Enoy!";
mail ($email, $subject, $message, $headers);
That way the AOL dummies get their hyperlinked HTML links, and all the cool
people of the world get the regular simple version.
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RE: [PHP] Sending pretty email
Although I will probably getting tarred and feathered for this, I send out at least a million (multiple emails for lists around the 200 thousand customer mark) emails a week, mostly html. When I wrote the software interface (in PHP) to do so, I mentioned to my bosses that many people would not be able to read these HTML emails (ie. AOL, Eudora, Lotus 5.0, and my beloved pine). This deterred them naught, cuz they wanted to send banners in the email. Since email with banners generated more revenue than without (however little money that may be), I was overruled. Hence, I read up on multi-part email. This can be done, and I used Richard Heyes' html-mime email class to do it. The class was based on the SMTP class that can be found on Manuel Lemos' PHPClasses site (http://phpclasses.upperdesign.com), along with the SMTP class. I now have the ability to send straight HTML, straight TEXT, or combo emails that are interpreted correctly by all email clients (including AOL clients). And, since I don't use the mail() function, it typically runs about 150% faster (mail() puts the messages in the mail queue, but the SMTP class writes directly to port 25 of the mail server). All this and it runs on a linux system that grabs the email addresses out of a M$ SQL 7 database. The database allows the customers the ability to opt-out of certain emails. So don't refrain from doing it because some people say it shouldn't be done for one reason or another. Simply fix those reasons so they don't know any different. -Original Message- From: Todd Cary [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2001 8:46 AM To: Richard Scott Crawford Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PHP] Sending "pretty" email Richard - For me you are pointing out one of the dilemmas I face on a daily basis that I call the "fin dilemma". I coined this expression from the era when Detroit put fins on the cars. These did not make the car perfrom better; they only appealed to need to get a car with fins because the neighbor had one. Yet I earn my living by writing software for clients and when I suggest that they use the KISS principle, they tell me that I am not up with the times. There is a very interesting book that I came across at a friend's home addressing effective Web design. Though I cannot remember the authors name, he has done many of the "big name" magazine covers as well as some big name Web sites and he believes in simplicity. Quite a deilemma!!! Todd -- Todd Cary Ariste Software [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [PHP] Sending pretty email
On 11 Mar 2001 10:57:32 -0800, Michael Geier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So don't refrain from doing it because some people say it shouldn't be done for one reason or another. Simply fix those reasons so they don't know any different. I'll second this - while I personally consider HTML email a waste of time[1], a lot of people like it and it does open up some nice possibilities. The key is remembering that if you're going to do it, you need to do it right - sending the proper multi-part mime headers, providing alternatives for people who can't use HTML[2] and generally just being polite. When presenting this to managers and/or clients, point out that this maximizes the number of people who can read their messages - they should grasp the whole "block potential customers = fewer sales" concept quickly. [1] For reasons having more to do with security and the crimes against good design committed by a few; an email client which gave the user the kind of control a browser like Opera does would be a lot more tolerable. [2] It's not those of us using text-based email clients, either. Think of wireless device users or people working at large corps which installed software to disable anything remotely dynamic in incoming emails. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PHP] Sending pretty email
I often receive email from commercial sites (e.g. ZDnet) that looks like a Web page. How can I do that with Sendmail in PHP? Todd -- Todd Cary Ariste Software [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [PHP] Sending pretty email
Send e-mail headers: Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Then in the body, put your HTML. Todd Cary wrote: I often receive email from commercial sites (e.g. ZDnet) that looks like a Web page. How can I do that with Sendmail in PHP? Todd -- Todd Cary Ariste Software [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Monte Ohrt [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ispi.net/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [PHP] Sending pretty email
I often receive email from commercial sites (e.g. ZDnet) that looks like a Web page. How can I do that with Sendmail in PHP? The man page for "mail" gives an example of it. http://www.php.net/mail It's just one "$header" line, stating HTML, then the rest of your message should be in HTML: htmlbody h1Hello Todd!/h1 pThank you for your can of worms./p Of course I recommend spacing out your HTML so that people without HTML capabilities can still make good sense of it. -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [PHP] Sending pretty email
The first thing to do is to take two aspirin and lie down until the temptation to do this passes. It may be cool, but those of us who use Eudora or Pine for our e-mail (because it actually works the way we want it to instead of making us work the way it wants us to like Outlook does) don't read HTML-encoded mail, don't *want* to read HTML-encoded mail, and get really annoyed when it shows up in our mailboxes. At 11:11 AM 03/10/2001, you wrote: Todd Cary wrote: I often receive email from commercial sites (e.g. ZDnet) that looks like a Web page. How can I do that with Sendmail in PHP? -- Richard Crawford (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.mossroot.com http://www.stonegoose.com/house AIM Handle: Buffalo2K "When you lose the power to laugh at yourself, you lose the power to think straight." --Clarence Darrow -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
