derek gulbranson

Why resizing people’s browser windows is the devil’s work

I've been working on a bunch of holiday card emails for clients lately and they've all had designers asking if we can resize people's browser windows to fit the square box they designed for the flash-based card. The answer is yes, but no.

Most people think everyone uses the computer just like they do, although there are so many different ways to work with computers that most people don't do any one thing. This means that most people are wrong in their assumptions about most people. Yet most people don't realize this. (This is true for so many things, but I won't go into that.)

Resizing people's browser windows is always a bad idea, in my opinion. Nothing you could create is so important to rearrange my stuff and possibly affect the default settings on my computer. It's especially a bad idea to do this from an email, where the user may not already have a browser window open and it's more likely that you're going to screw with their defaults. If the user closes the window without any other windows open, you'll reset their preferred size for all new windows to be the size you selected for your holiday flash box. The user must figure out how to undo this after they've finished being abused by your content. Don't even get me started on taking away people's toolbars and menus. Just try to figure out how to get a menu back without a menu. The remotest chance of doing this to any of your recipients should be avoided at all cost.

It's a bit like giving someone a gift and then coming over and rearranging their furniture so that your gift is perfectly displayed in their living room. Yea, nice, but get over yourself. I appreciate the gift but the rearranging my stuff part left a sour taste in my mouth. Hmm, how do I get you to not do that next year...

Yes, if you know what you're doing you can avoid this or recover from it. There are even complicated hoops you can jump through to avoid setting people's future window sizes. But why? Why should the user have to know what they're doing? Are you really that much of a design nazi? The true problem is that you've designed a square box, not a flash page. Flash resizes very nicely to fit the window, why not just take advantage of that? Put padding around the flash content and let it fill the window, whatever size your recipient prefers.

Either way, I decide what size my browser window should be, not you. If you resize my browser window you better have an unsubscribe link.

How To Use Outlook to Send an HTML File as the Body of an Email

I create a lot of HTML email templates and one of the more frequent questions after sending the HTML file to the client is how do I actually send that HTML file as an email.

Here's instructions for how to get the HTML into Outlook so you can send it as an email.

1. Save the HTML.

   If you have recieved the HTML file via email, save the attached HTML out of the email you received it in using one of the following methods:

1. right-click on the attachment and choose "Save Attachment"
2. drag and drop the file to your desktop or local filesystem
3. From the File Menu of the open message choose "File > Save Attachments."

   DO NOT double click on the attachment to open it and then choose "File > Save As." This causes the HTML file to be opened in your web browser, and choosing "File > Save As" from a browser may helpfully rewrite everything.
   
   (I was suprised to learn that "save the attachment" means quite a few different things to different people.)

2. Put it in the Stationery Directory.

   Move the HTML file to:

   C:\Documents and Settings\*userid*\Application Data\Microsoft\Stationery.

   The Application Data folder is a hidden folder so you may not be able to see it by simply browsing to it. You can change your preferences to display hidden files and folders (Windows Explorer > Tools > Folder Options > View > Show hidden files and folders), or copy and past the above location into the Windows Explorer (double-click My Computer) address bar, replacing *userid* with the correct folder.

   The Stationery folder is created by Outlook the first time you use the stationery feature. If you do not see the stationery folder, try creating a new message as below with any other stationery and the folder will be created in your user directory.

3. Action > New message using > More stationery...

   From the Action menu of the main Outlook window, choose Action > New mail message using > More stationery..., then choose your HTML file from the list. This will open a new email message with your HTML file as the body.

   Outlook displays HTML differently when it's editing the HTML as opposed to simply displaying it. This can cause extra spacing to appear at the end of lines or around images. Sending the message to yourself will confirm that these types of display problems will not appear for the recipient.

How To Use CSS in HTML Emails

When I started working on HTML emails I tried Googling for CSS and HTML email and it seemed the theme of the articles was to warn designers not to use CSS in email because it is not widely supported by email clients. Instead, they recommend using the tag that was deprecated in 1999.

So I think these other articles are just outdated. There was a time when CSS and email would have been a naive combo. Today, I have a hard time imagining anyone well-versed in CSS recommending tags. Since I have been using CSS in HTML emails for a while now, I thought I would put together some more current information from my current practices. Perhaps others also need to create HTML emails, but cringe at the site of tags.