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Comment by idle_zealot

17 hours ago

> standardize alternative browsers on a consistent subset of web standards and document them so that "smolweb" enthusiasts can target that

Could such a standard be based on the subset of HTML/CSS acceptable in emails? Maybe with a few extra things for interactivity.

14 comments

idle_zealot

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43920  13 hours ago

AFAIK, "email HTML" isn't standardized either; most organizations that make nice-looking HTML emails have to do a ton of testing across different clients and come up with workarounds to make everything look consistent.

  • WorldMaker  3 minutes ago

    It's fascinating how much "email HTML" is trapped in about HTML ~2.5, with limited CSS support and still a ton of FONT tags and TABLE layouts.

    HTML 2 might be an interesting subset of HTML to "focus on" for smolweb, but it would be a big retro throwback, and not feel at all modern.

    If you were starting today, might be more interesting to start with the most modern stuff and work backwards. HTML 2 TABLE could be implemented as a specialization of CSS Grid, for instance.

  • notpushkin  10 hours ago

    Could we standardize email HTML?

    • jeroenhd  7 hours ago

      If you can convince Apple, Google, and Microsoft to implement your standard: sure. Attempts have been made with varying success.

      Your standard still needs to render in Outlook on Windows, though, which means you need to support the weird Office version of IE11 as an upper limit.

      3 replies →

    • OptionX  8 hours ago

      You could write a standard.

      If it actually gets mainstream adoption or goes into the standards pile it another question entirely.

OJFord  13 hours ago

A few extra things like.. JavaScript?

  • fshafique  10 hours ago

    No interactivity! The email must be printable as-is. Not even CSS code to change styles when you hover over links. That's what I would for a minimum HTML for emails standard that's widely supported.

    • notpushkin  10 hours ago

      It’s actually a bummer: you can’t use a <style> tag because some email clients don’t like them. Instead, you have to inline your styles in every element. the lack of :hover is just a side effect of that I think (although it plays out nicely here).

      (While on it, can we also ban loading images from third-party servers?)

      2 replies →