Tips, Tools and FAQs for using the MassMind mailer

QA for Mailer

• Microsoft Outlook 2007 HTML email Validator:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0b764c08-0f86-431e-8bd5-ef0e9ce26a3a&displaylang=en
• check that all section headings click through to correct sections
• check group affiliation of any articles and make sure call out box mentions login instructions if some content is for a private group

HTML Code Best Practices

Outlook 2007 Requirements

• Do not use px in any element. For example, "height=’50px’" for pictures will not work, instead use "height=’50’"
• No background images in DIV tags and TABLE cells.
• No nested background colors. A background color in a DIV or TABLE cell displays fine. However, if you nest another TABLE or DIV within the element, the background color vanishes.
• No FLOAT or POSITION attribute in DIV tags. In other words, CSS-based layouts won't work in Outlook 2007. Tables only going forward.
• No FORM tags. Quite simply, embedded email surveys will not work in Outlook 2007. What’s even worse, Outlook 2007 actually strips out the form elements, so your recipients will not be able to tell if a form was there to begin with. (We suggest mitigating this with a "Problems with the survey? Complete it online." link at the top of your message.)
• No animated .gif files or Flash content. Animated .gif files just won’t animate. With Flash, you’ll just get a big red X.
• Full documentation on supported and unsupported content: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx

Email test environments used by Massmind:

• Outlook 2003
• Outlook 2007
• Entourage
• Thunderbird
• Evolution