Is It True That Newsletters In HTML Should Have A "table-based" Layouts?

I read somewhere that when creating a HTML email, you should use the table-based layout. You should not care about creating tableless css based layout. Is that true? I have to crea

Solution 1:

If you want your HTML-email to look good in most email clients, you should write your HTML as it still was 1999 :)

Solution 2:

I'd highly recommend paying a visit to the Email Standards Project website. It lists almost every major email client (both standalone and web-based) on the market and outlines how much HTML support is built into each one.

Also check out Campaign Monitor's email design guidelines for some practical guides for proper HTML email building -- including, sadly yes, "use tables."

Solution 3:

This is probably more based on the reality of email client rendering (which is terrible) than anything else. Technically it's almost certainly wrong, but pragmatically it might be the best advice. Truppo touches on this.

Solution 4:

I would love a world where no one expected HTML to be used where plain text would do, but that is not the situation. If your job is to come up with HTML that will not embarrass you when your subscribers try to view it in their favorite email clients (applications or web based email), it is hard to stick with semantic markup and CSS.

Take what I am saying with a grain of salt because I have only done this as a learning exercise and not professionally. Based on an article I had bookmarked and further links I found in that article, the following pages seem to have a good discussion of the real issues involved in sending HTML email.

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters/

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/principles-beautiful-html-email/

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/designers-guide-html-email/

Given the issues involved, using tables for layout makes practical sense.

Solution 5:

There's certainly no standard that mandates it, and in fact, best practices dictate that tables should not be used for layout (except in the case of laying out tabular data).

There is an argument to be made for using tables in presentation, as there's no guarantee the plethora of desktop and web-based email clients will render CSS-based presentation properly... However, I wouldn't say that's an argument in-and-of itself.