[freudling]

I posted this on Apple's site:

I have searched and viewed several threads on these discussions, but nothing really answers the question.

There are a few solutions in terms of writing HTML mail for the mac, and sending that mail via Apple Mail. But they are paltry at best.

The result I am looking for is something like Apple's very own newsletters most of us get. They look great, but how to produce stuff like that....

What I want to do is produce and send nice looking invoices via email. I know one solution is to produce it in HTML and then, after opening the file in safari, clicking FILE>MAIL CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE.

But that is a lot of work for each invoice. I would like to just be able to have an HTML invoice template, then add in the info and email it (copy and paste into email message?). But for the latter, I think Apple Mail will not support this.

[Catfish_Man]

Nice html emails is an oxymoron. That said, mail will support this in 10.5

[Chuckit]

Yeah, Apple Mail doesn't really do this right now. Sending a Web page is the closest you can get. And know that there are a lot of headachy problems with HTML e-mails, especially since Microsoft has completely ****ed up Outlook's HTML rendering (it now uses the Microsoft Word HTML rendering engine).

[freudling]

My solution:

I have made up a template invoice in Pages. I open that, input the approriate data, and then export the untitled doc as an html. I then open it in safari and email the contents of the page to the recipient. Each exported html file is saved accordingly, as a single invoice in my archives, and I never save the untitled Pages document based on the invoice. So this way, I don't have two invoice files cluttering everything up (i.e. one pages doc the other html).

As for the way it looks, I tested it by sending to yahoo, hotmail and gmail. It looked pretty dang good in each after an hour of playing with the layout. I am happy with this solution. Only problem, it won't include my company logo which is a png image. I think I have to stick the index.html file that pages creates inside the files folder it also creates.

[besson3c]

Creating good HTML email is much trickier than one might think.

Many email clients are brain dead when it comes to HTML interpretation. It is for this reason that if you Google HTML email creation you'll see recommendations to use HTML 4, tables, inline CSS, and very basic stuff. If you want to produce HTML that looks solid in all email clients, you are going to need to hand code your template, and you will need to code it accordingly.

Secondly, you want to send your message in multipart so that a plain text and HTML version is offered. Most email clients do support HTML, but some may disable HTML, and some handheld devices may work best with plain text versions.

Thirdly, you want to make sure that your email will not produce a high spam score. I strongly recommend running your template through SpamAssassin to see how spammy your emails appear (I would be happy to help you with this if you want to send one my way).

If you will be emailing several people these emails, I also suggest using something like the Mailman mailing list manager, as Mailman will insert the appropriate list headers on your email which should decrease your spam score.

I have written an HTML Mailman mailer that basically works off of a HTML template, uses the TinyMCE editor to allow you to lay out your content, and will send the message in multipart to your Mailman list. I can either give you this code or help you along with this if you are interested.

There are a lot of things to consider here if you really want to do this right. Like I said, this is tougher than one might think.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by freudling 

My solution:

I have made up a template invoice in Pages. I open that, input the approriate data, and then export the untitled doc as an html. I then open it in safari and email the contents of the page to the recipient. Each exported html file is saved accordingly, as a single invoice in my archives, and I never save the untitled Pages document based on the invoice. So this way, I don't have two invoice files cluttering everything up (i.e. one pages doc the other html).

As for the way it looks, I tested it by sending to yahoo, hotmail and gmail. It looked pretty dang good in each after an hour of playing with the layout. I am happy with this solution. Only problem, it won't include my company logo which is a png image. I think I have to stick the index.html file that pages creates inside the files folder it also creates.

I'm very impressed that it looked good in Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail. Did it work well in Outlook Express? My advice: I wouldn't rely on a WYSIWYG HTML generator to produce your emails like this on a regular basis, because some email programs are extremely picky and tempermental with their HTML interpretation. Google HTML email and you will see that HTML email works best in the compatibility department when designed in a very particular way, unfortunately.

[freudling]

besson3c, I PM'd you.