These days, many e-mail programs have a very annoying "feature" — they don't load remote images in HTML e-mail messages (images that load from a Web server, not those attached to a message). Instead, you must manually click to download the images in each such message. This "feature" supposedly protects you by preventing spammers from detecting that you've opened their messages. Fine, but many of us don't receive much spam, yet some e-mail programs don't allow us to turn this "feature" off.
Unfortunately, these programs also block remote cascading style sheets (CSS). Nowadays, many law firms and especially publishers use CSS when designing Web pages. Thanks to CSS, you need not place design elements in each Web page, but can instead simply refer to a file with all the design specifications, including font information.
All well and good, but if you refer to a remote CSS in your HTML e-mail newsletters, you risk not having your e-mail newsletters render properly thanks to the image-blocking feature noted above. To make matters worse, even embedding CSS in your newsletter carries a risk because some of the online e-mail services (such as Gmail) strip embedded CSS from e-mail newsletters.
For this reason, I recommend that you use <font> tags and other basic HTML formatting code within your HTML e-mail newsletters. Also, use <br> tags instead of <p> tags for line breaks as the former will preserve fonts. While using these tags will add to the complexity of your code, at least your newsletters will look as intended regardless of whether your recipients download images or not.
We have always used <font> tags and <br> tags in the HTML version of TechnoLawyer newsletters (most of our members elect to receive our newsletters in plain text though, not HTML).
About TechnoEditorials
A TechnoEditorial is the vehicle through which we opine and provide tips of interest to managing partners, law firm administrators, and others in the legal profession. TechnoEditorials appear first in TechnoGuide, and later here in TechnoLawyer Blog. TechnoGuide, which is free, also contains exclusive content. You can subscribe here.
