Quality of HTML in email

[HiSpeed]

I have a website that manages the sending of messages (text). To extend its functionality, I want to send emails in HTML. Technically no worry, it runs in PHP.

Just out of curiosity, I looked at the source of some mails that I had received as HTML and then the horror almost no CSS formatting to big shots "<table>", HTML attributes as if it rained (valign = "top" height = "30", etc.). I was the one who made a clean site with CSS and XHTML, but I am left like a fool.

My question is: is that senders of mail have nothing to shine, or is it the contrary engines embedded in HTML mail clients? Wanting to do good with clean HTML, is that I might not ultimately produce messages that few people will come to read correctly?

[Zecho]

The problem is the recipients of mail client ...

To summarize:
- Confine the design in an array.
- No centralized CSS (the better not to put all, and use the HTML attribute, as the old one)
- No background-image must meter of </img> squarely ...

[kelfro]

Some points to remember when sending HTML mails:

1. Support for HTML and CSS completely varies from one mail client to another. On Thunderbird or Outlook, it is very good, however in Lotus Notes, or webmail like Yahoo, AOL, OVH, etc, it is generally bad.

2. By default on some clients like Thunderbird, images are disabled.

3. The display of emails depends on the configuration of email software. Thus if the visitor is asked to receive such an email on a form, you can ask him if he prefers to receive mail in HTML (default) or text.

[void]

We must understand that some client/webmail accepts the CSS, but those who do not or inadequately implements (even the big ones, like Gmail) require us to do something more universal. Also the main thing to remember is that Oulook uses Word as html editor. And as it is limited by the less powerful engine, no secrets, you have to code everything.