mailchimp/email-blueprints

Why using <table> as columns?

charlesmudy opened this issue · 7 comments

Hi,

Thanks for the open-source HTML email template, I am a bit confused as to why the blueprint template is using table as columns, for me - it just doesn't work and somehow doesn't make any sense in terms of natural structure for html table formatting.
table-rows-columns-smaller

I'm guessing I might be wrong, please can anyone provide any technical reason behind this, I have changed it for td and it works perfectly for me but I would still need to know.

Thanks in advance.
Shina

bago commented

check Outlook 2007+, Gmail and responsive behaviour of your table using td vs table using nested tables.

It works perfectly fine, you can see it here https://github.com/charlesmudy/Responsive-HTML-Email-Template

Test it and let me know

bago commented

That template nest a lot of tables. You probably fixed outlook issues by nesting more tables.
In your template there are up to 6 nested tables while this templates uses at most 4 nested tables.
I remember many issues with older Lotus Notes when using many nested tables.

Yes indeed there a bit more than the blue-print but the result is better which is the main goal and not only on outlook but also on in-browser emails like gmail and hotmail. You can check the demo on lotus, it works fine on 8+ if I remember correctly but usually, the open rates of lotus notes is very very low.

The nested tables are meant for proper blocks and each sections are divided by rows (). Remember that we want the contents to stay the same for platform that don’t support media queries, nesting the tables helps target it properly.

Play with it and let me know if you can come up with something simpler.

On 01 Dec 2014, at 16:00, Stefano Bagnara notifications@github.com wrote:

That template nest a lot of tables. You probably fixed outlook issues by nesting more tables.
In your template there are up to 6 nested tables while this templates uses at most 4 nested tables.
I remember many issues with older Lotus Notes when using many nested tables.


Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

bago commented

I don't have a Lotus Notes 6 here to test the table nesting. BTW, I was answering to your question. Maybe I misunderstood your question.

You asked why the templates uses tables instead of td for columns.. My answer is "because using tds would need one more tag in the middle".

Maybe you should provide code snippets to show what's this issue about (I can't make sense of the screenshot you posted)

To test your email code on more obscure email clients like Lotus Notes 6, you might check out Email on Acid and Litmus.

From: Stefano Bagnara <notifications@github.commailto:notifications@github.com>
Reply-To: mailchimp/email-blueprints <reply@reply.github.commailto:reply@reply.github.com>
Date: Monday, December 1, 2014 at 11:11 AM
To: mailchimp/email-blueprints <email-blueprints@noreply.github.commailto:email-blueprints@noreply.github.com>
Subject: Re: [email-blueprints] Why using

as columns? (#25)

I don't have a Lotus Notes 6 here to test the table nesting. BTW, I was answering to your question. Maybe I misunderstood your question.

You asked why the templates uses tables instead of td for columns.. My answer is "because using tds would need one more tag in the middle".

Maybe you should provide code snippets to show what's this issue about (I can't make sense of the screenshot you posted)

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/25#issuecomment-65098444.

bago commented

Sure, I know... I don't use them because they don't provide previews for most italian email providers.
I don't care at all about Lotus 6, I was just answering your question ;-)