/responsive-html-email-signature

✅Template generator for (responsive) emails & email signatures.

Primary LanguageHTML

Responsive HTML mail signatures

Let's punch email clients in the stomach!

Responsive templates for mail signatures.

When you need some basic signatures that work on mobile.
...and your colleagues need them too.
...but you don't want to deal with tables and inline styles.

Preview

Here's how the samples look:

responsive emails-01 responsive emails-02

What does it do

  • config-based template generation
  • allows generating multiple templates (for your colleagues too!)
  • transforms linked (<link>) CSS into inline styles
  • embeds local img[src] into the template (base64).*
  • minifies the template
  • media queries for mail clients that support them
  • can build templates from multiple sources
  • watches HTML/CSS files for changes and re-builds

*Some mail clients don't support them, so an external URL might be a good idea.

Getting started

$ npm install
$ gulp

Take a look at src/fadeit/ for an example. Copy / Paste, rename it and change src/fadeit/conf.js to suite your needs. Run gulp to build the templates (into /dist). The gulp task will watch HTML & CSS files by default.

Overview

This diagram shows what happens to your templates. Responsive HTML email template/signatures diagram

CSS Support

Remember, it's HTML mails, so you need to check a big-ass table to find out nothing's gonna work. See this. To convert CSS files to inline styles gulp-inline-css is being used.

TODO

  • closing inline-css issue #8 would greatly improve this repo
  • preprocessor support (simplifies BEM)
  • use github pages to show live demos
  • fix all mail clients

Usage with different e-mail clients

Thunderbird

There are several Thunderbird plugins which can automatically insert signatures when composing e-mails. We recommend SmartTemplate4 as one of the options. It can use different templates for new e-mails, replies and forwarded e-mails.

Apple Mail / OS X (oh boy)

Solution 1

  • Open Mail.app and go to Mail -> Preferences -> Signatures
  • Create a new signature and write some placeholder text (doesn't matter what it is, but you have to identify it later).
  • Close Mail.app.
  • Open terminal, then open the signature files using TextEdit (might be different for iCloud drive check the article below).
$ open -a TextEdit ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/V3/MailData/Signatures/ubiquitous_*.mailsignature
  • Keep the file with the placeholder open, close the other ones.
  • Replace the <body>...</body> and it's contents with the template of your choice. Don't remove the meta information at the top!
  • Open Mail.app and compose a new mail. Select the signature from the list to test it out.

NB: Images won't appear in the signature preview, but will work fine when you compose a message.

####Solution 2 You can also open the HTML files in /dist in a browser, CMD + A, CMD + C and then paste into the signature box. This won't copy the <html> part or the <style> part that includes media queries. Follow the guide if you want it.

Troubleshooting

If solution #1 doesn't work, you can repeat the steps and lock the signature files before you open Mail.app again. Lock Files:

$ chflags uchg ~/Library/Mail/V3/MailData/Signatures/*.mailsignature

If you want to do changes later, you have to unlock the files:

$ chflags nouchg ~/Library/Mail/V3/MailData/Signatures/*.mailsignature

If you are using iCloud drive or having problems with it, you might also want to check this article.

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