674333 - HTML Emails on AMO

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Public Pages, defect)

Description

[Gregory Koberger (:gkoberger)]

I want to start sending HTML emails.  Not full layouts with extensive use of CSS and images -- just subtle changes, like using link tags.  Fligtar/Wil, yay or nay?

Cons:
- They're harder to do.  Significantly harder.
- jbalogh doesn't like HTML emails

Pros:
- They look much more professional.
- We can gray out the footer a bit and make it smaller.
- Links don't have to be long URLs; they can be text! 
- Currently, the biggest, bluest thing in the emails is the unsubscribe link.  With HTML, we can downplay the importance of the unsubscribe link.

Comment 1

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

I disable html emails in clients where I can (and in gmail emails with images are full of holes by default).  That said, plenty of places use them so I'll assume there is a positive reaction from normal people.  No objections from me, except that if we want to use HTML we need additional time to write the code for it and test it.

Comment 2

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

Sure, as long as we don't use images.

Comment 3

[Gregory Koberger (:gkoberger)]

Wil, what milestone should this go in?

Comment 4

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Well, Future I suppose.  Do you have emails you want to send to people right now? :)

If you want to convert our current emails that's a possibility but lower priority than all the impala/app store stuff.  Email conversions split themselves up into smaller projects nicely though and we could fit them in here and there.

Comment 5

[Gregory Koberger (:gkoberger)]

I suppose my "Greg's Add-on of the Week!" ezine can wait until later.

Really, my big problem is the unsubscribe links.  I want to give the user the option to unsubscribe from either the current topic (say, "my add-on was upgraded successfully") or all topics at once, and having two gigantic links is unwieldy and confusing.  It would be nice to use an <a> when possible.

Comment 6

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Give us a patch for one of the emails.  Let's see what it looks like

Comment 7

[Andy McKay]

Can we please send both text and html mime types so clients can just use the plain text one if desired.

Comment 8

[Gregory Koberger (:gkoberger)]

Andy: naturally :)

Comment 9

[Gregory Koberger (:gkoberger)]

I still think this is a good idea, however I'll refile if we ever have a pressing need for it.