The HTML coding standards and dilemmas or why is this so complicated? Part 2

No email is an island unto itself.

Email design is more than just making your HTML jive for the end user, you have to follow standards in order to comply with the thousands of email filters that scan your email in order to determine if you're friend or foe, ham or spam! Spam Assassin alone has over 4000+ filters that date back to the dawn of time. Some of these filters actually examine the nature and structure of your HTML and look for places where your HTML is out of compliance with coding standards.

Let's start with the Quoted Printable line declaration sometimes referred to as QP Encoding. QP is one variant of a MIME, we'll talk about MIME encoding in another rant. Stay with me here, QP encoding is a way of extending the transmission of text beyond A-Z, a-z, 0-9 into foreign languages that use accented characters and even multi-byte non-latin based languages. Did I just lose you? In short, QP is a way of making email work for everyone everywhere.

One of the requirements of QP Encoding is that the length of the encoded line be limited to 76 characters. In other words, when your mail server converts your long hours of design work into binary and sends it to another mail server each line of that transmitted code must be no more than 76 characters. So what happens if it's more than 76 characters you ask? One of the filters contained within Spam Assassin examines how long your QP encoded lines are. If your line length is longer than 76 characters then you just raised your overall spam score. ISPs like Excite & Lycos actively use Spam Assassin to score your email, so do you know how long your lines are?

The pitfalls and challenges of email design run deep and long, thankfully PV's tools run the gamut from in-depth diagnostic information and HTML validation, to very precise interpretations of received headers for our seedlist tracking. Your design depends not only on how sharp your code skills are but how you actually go about transmitting that design at the level of the MTA  (Mail Transfer Agent or Mail server). If you declare a QP Encoding make sure that your mail server is actually cutting your lines off at 76 characters or you may find your hard work landing in your customer's spam folder.

Cheers!
-Len Shneyder
Dir. of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications