Notification Emails Updated

Chucken

Chucken wrote: »

My emails arent showing proper links just ordinary writing ( I know, Im great at explaining myself )
For example, a reply from CVPL, I used to be able to click the link in the email, now I cant.

What's happening here is that your e-mail client was parsing links in plain text e-mails, but the HTML mails aren't formatted that way so you can't click them. I noticed the same thing myself.

Smash The House

Dades wrote: »

Just compared an older reported post with the new style on an iPhone and it's a definite improvement.
It was fine to read before, but now it's just that bit clearer.

As for developing, I hate the idea that we should be producing stuff that has to cater for the lowest technological denominator. I'm a developer too, and people would still be using IE6 if every site still pandered to their needs. You have to push people to improve their own UX or we'll all be stuck in the past forever.

ah come on
WP7.8 might be just a bit old but to comapre it to IE 6 is ridcoulous.

Anyway, I never asked for the whole system to go back to plain text. Why can't it be possible for us to specify on our account settings if we want html or text.

I just would of expected Boards to test out the new email on a variety of devices with a variety of OS's before rolling it out. (Im sure they did test it, not everyone has an iPhone though)
since no one has commented what the emails are like in android I'll test it out myself.

Chucken

Karsini wrote: »

What's happening here is that your e-mail client was parsing links in plain text e-mails, but the HTML mails aren't formatted that way so you can't click them. I noticed the same thing myself.

Its pretty annoying.

Steve

<old and grumpy>Opinion: I don't like them, I prefer the plain text mails </old and grumpy>

Observation: Gmail blocks the images in the html by default so it looks crap unless you opt-in to allowing them from boards.

Dades

Smash The House wrote: »

ah come on
WP7.8 might be just a bit old but to comapre it to IE 6 is ridcoulous.

I can't believe a year old OS can't display HTML emails! But, yeah, that shouldn't be spoken of with IE6 but Microsoft mail clients always sucked. A huge percentage of PC outlook versions still being supported uses MS Word to render its mails. PITA.

Don't people get loads of HTML emails? Leaving aside brief work and general chitchat mails almost every mail I get from stuff I subscribe too/buy from/belong to is a HTML mail now.

Chucken

Dades wrote: »

I can't believe a year old OS can't display HTML emails! But, yeah, that shouldn't be spoken of with IE6 but Microsoft mail clients always sucked. A huge percentage of PC outlook versions still being supported uses MS Word to render its mails. PITA.

Don't people get loads of HTML emails? Leaving aside brief work and general chitchat mails almost every mail I get from stuff I subscribe too/buy from/belong to is a HTML mail now.

This is where I get lost. I have no idea what any of that means.

All I know is I've never seen emails that look like these new ones before.

Mothman

Mothman wrote: »

I can see that the general consensus is positive but at my end the print is a lot smaller than any other email, and with my sight getting more compromised in my maturity this is not a good move for me.
The issue is simply the text size.

This on a mac using mail

I'd like a response to this issue....in fact I'm pleading, either a fix I can make at my end or a fix at your end.

Attached is a screenshot of before (left) and after.
The old version, the text is same size as any other email and I can read it fine. Now the smallness of the text size is a real struggle. I can read a line or 2, but anything more takes too much effort/concentration and I'm giving up.

In mail there is a text size adjuster but its not working with these emails.

Mrs OBumble

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

Hi,

It seems like your email provider's web client doesn't support HTML

Well spotted, Sherlock Holmes.

Boards.ie is the only site which sends me non-text emails that I really do need to look at during the day, ie which cannot wait for me to get home to my machine with an email client at night.

The others that send HTML-only email are basically marketing bumph, which can wait.

Smash The House

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Well spotted, Sherlock Holmes.

Boards.ie is the only site which sends me non-text emails that I really do need to look at during the day, ie which cannot wait for me to get home to my machine with an email client at night.

The others that send HTML-only email are basically marketing bumph, which can wait.

Exactly, they are called notification emails for a reason! I'd lose my mind if every conversational email I had was in HTML.
It's almost as if boards are just trying to create work for the new staff they hired.

Dades wrote: »

I can't believe a year old OS can't display HTML emails! But, yeah, that shouldn't be spoken of with IE6 but Microsoft mail clients always sucked. A huge percentage of PC outlook versions still being supported uses MS Word to render its mails. PITA.

Emails working fine on two android devices I tested it on; one a low end spec and one high end. So it is just WP causing me bother.

Mr. G

This is what it looks like in outlook. To be honest I think the font would be much better if it was Arial rather than Times New Roman. Otherwise it looks fine

28064212

Mr. G wrote: »

This is what it looks like in outlook. To be honest I think the font would be much better if it was Arial rather than Times New Roman. Otherwise it looks fine

The emails are in Arial, or at least they should be. Looks like the usual Outlook/MS "special" interpretation of HTML is coming into play

Mr. G

28064212 wrote: »

The emails are in Arial, or at least they should be. Looks like the usual Outlook/MS "special" interpretation of HTML is coming into play

Hmm That's what I was thinking because if I view in a browser, its Arial. I have other emails that are HTML with Arial font, and they come in as Arial. Must be outlook I guess :rolleyes:

Dades

^^ You are right - that does not look good.

I've been viewing mine in Gmail but if I view them in Outlook 2010 I see what you have there. Outlook is simply using the default font associated with it's HTML rendering engine (Word).

A quick look at the source code suggests the font-size and family need to be added to the <table> tags actually containing the text of the mails. The correct font is referenced elsewhere but is not being picked up where it's needed.

You can beat Outlook - but you need to hardcode stuff in everywhere.

Mr. G

Dades wrote: »

^^ You are right - that does not look good.

I've been viewing mine in Gmail but if I view them in Outlook 2010 I see what you have there. Outlook is simply using the default font associated with it's HTML rendering engine (Word).

A quick look at the source code suggests the font-size and family need to be added to the <table> tags actually containing the text of the mails. The correct font is referenced elsewhere but is not being picked up where it's needed.

You can beat Outlook - but you need to hardcode stuff in everywhere.

Thanks Dades. I don't think its really worth the hassle doing it anyway..

I'm not even able to view the source code in outlook 2013, it's a pain to be honest, its not as easy as 2010 to get the source code (if I right click there is no View Source option... I think the only way is to work around with registries)

Dades

Mr. G wrote: »

Thanks Dades. I don't think its really worth the hassle doing it anyway..

I really meant those suggestions as a job for the Boards dev lads!

They should be able to fix the source code for those on Outlook. I spent some time earlier in the year creating a template for notification emails so I know how much of a pain it is.

kc66

When I click "Link to Post" in my notifications, it doesn't scroll to the post, just opens the page.

An example of a link:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=85735213#post85735213&utm_source=notification&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digestthread%23post85735213

I think the problem is %23 instead of #

At first I thought the e-mails were fine, but now that I've seen them on my 27" 1920x1080 monitor, the text size is just too small. It could do with being increased a bit.

Zascar

Realistically should the design of these emails not be responsive to easily adapt to any size display?

oscarBravo

Zascar wrote: »

Realistically should the design of these emails not be responsive to easily adapt to any size display?

Ideally, but we've already seen how hard it is to design for how badly broken some email clients are. If a MUA can't render simple HTML without pitching a fit, how likely is it to cope with responsive styles?

Sparks

Zascar wrote: »

Nice one! It's about time we got up to speed and started using HTML emails. Seriously anyone that still wants plain texts should put down internet explorer and leave the internet

Come here until I beat some sense into you with the keyboard from my VT220 you upstart!

Orion

Zascar wrote: »

Nice one! It's about time we got up to speed and started using HTML emails. Seriously anyone that still wants plain texts should put down internet explorer and leave the internet

You try reading them in Mutt!

Mothman

Mothman wrote: »

I can see that the general consensus is positive but at my end the print is a lot smaller than any other email, and with my sight getting more compromised in my maturity this is not a good move for me.
The issue is simply the text size.

This on a mac using mail

Mothman wrote: »

I'd like a response to this issue....in fact I'm pleading, either a fix I can make at my end or a fix at your end.

Attached is a screenshot of before (left) and after.
The old version, the text is same size as any other email and I can read it fine. Now the smallness of the text size is a real struggle. I can read a line or 2, but anything more takes too much effort/concentration and I'm giving up.

In mail there is a text size adjuster but its not working with these emails.

Karsini wrote: »

At first I thought the e-mails were fine, but now that I've seen them on my 27" 1920x1080 monitor, the text size is just too small. It could do with being increased a bit.

I've have searched and searched for an answer my end, downloaded programs, but I have not been able to break the small max text limit. I'm not very clever in this regard.

Its quite disappointing to take time out to give feedback and not get feedback in return.

Email notifications and my forum list was my main avenues of my browsing of Boards and both these have now been broken to the extent that I'm giving up.

PM me if there is any change for the better.

Dades

Don't have mail set up on a Mac... but in Outlook on PC you can (like in a browser) hold down Ctrl and use the mouse wheel to enlarge the text. Anything like this in Mail?

Wibbs

D like you describe in Outlook on PC, in apple mail you can change the size by hitting command +, but with Boards mails it only changes the titles not the text of the mail itself. Changing the default sizes in preferences doesn't change the main body font size either. In other HTML mails I get these methods work fine, but not with the Boards mails. As mothman said the text sizing is not working in Apple Mail. Hardly a rare mail client either.

Dades

Not sure what you mean by changing the titles, only, Wibbs. Any mails I get from Boards have just one 'box' that contains all the text in a single size. There's no titles, just text and line breaks.

That said, if it ain't working for you, it ain't working.

Wibbs

Sorry D, I was being as clear as mud. I mean the title above the main body of the mail changes font size no bother, but the main text doesn't.

A jpg paints a thousand words so.. I've exaggerated to illustrate

teeny font setting.


Increased to large font.


See what I mean D, the body text stays the same. Now if I do the same thing with other html mails I get the size of all fonts to go up. I'm sure it's some easy enough addition to make happen. It seems the way windows outlook handles it is different to apple mail.

Gordon

Wibbs wrote: »

D like you describe in Outlook on PC, in apple mail you can change the size by hitting command +, but with Boards mails it only changes the titles not the text of the mail itself. Changing the default sizes in preferences doesn't change the main body font size either. In other HTML mails I get these methods work fine, but not with the Boards mails. As mothman said the text sizing is not working in Apple Mail. Hardly a rare mail client either.

Obviously this isn't a workable solution, but a way round this (because I love ways round things!) is to set up a rule to firstly autoforward the email to yourself and then delete the original email. The mail that you receive can be resized by using command + or scroll.

Just checking and I have a number of html emails, it seems maybe 40 or 50% of them disallow resizing on Apple Mail.

Wibbs

Nice solution G. Any reason why this couldn't be solved from the senders end? I've not really had this issue before in Mail, but I presume the other half who don't show this issue have ticked some box/added code to allow it?

Gordon

Wibbs wrote: »

Nice solution G. Any reason why this couldn't be solved from the senders end? I've not really had this issue before in Mail, but I presume the other half who don't show this issue have ticked some box/added code to allow it?

Well, this is what's stopping the text resize, I imagine the reasoning is as the /*comment*/ suggests:

body { -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; -ms-text-size-adjust: none; } /* Prevent Webkit and Windows Mobile platforms from changing default font sizes. */

Steve

To understand the answer you must know the question

Was this an explicit bug fix or a general copy pasta from stackoverflow?