25 comments

  • Jason M, over 6 years ago

    I've waited so long. I almost stopped believing...

    9 points
    • Jason RodriguezJason Rodriguez, over 6 years ago

      I don't think most people believed in the first place. Huge move from Gmail, not only opening up more traditional responsive design options, but will lead everyone away from using inline styles, too. Say hello to more compact, maintainable email code...

      4 points
  • Tobias ReichTobias Reich, over 6 years ago

    Knock, knock. Who’s there? 2012.

    It was about time. Happy to see some movement, but there're still enough mail-clients far behind. Developing emails is such a pain.

    6 points
  • Tom WoodTom Wood, over 6 years ago

    As exciting as this should be, we'll still have to design for the worst case scenario – so in reality it makes little difference in the short term.

    As mentioned by Jason, if it leads to everyone changing their standards then that would be amazing.

    3 points
    • Dylan SmithDylan Smith, over 6 years ago

      The worst case scenario now will be Outlook, which made a huge deal last month out of getting their shit together.

      There are a bunch of smaller clients that will probably never change. But — as with web development — check your analytics and know specifically which clients you need to design for.

      5 points
      • Tom WoodTom Wood, over 6 years ago

        I'm not sure I agree with your last point — the worst case scenario is the client you need to design for. If 80% of our user base can see the email perfectly, but 20% can't, it's the 20% I need to design for.

        3 points
        • Dylan SmithDylan Smith, over 6 years ago

          If that number is 20%, sure. What if the number is 20? What if the number is .2%?

          Depending on how many users are on obscure or outdated email clients or web browsers, many companies make the call to ignore them because it isn't worth the additional time cost.

          0 points
    • Jason RodriguezJason Rodriguez, over 6 years ago

      As Dylan mentioned, the worst case scenario for most people is now Outlook. The two good things about Outlook are that 1) all of their bugs are essentially known issues with known fixes and 2) Microsoft is actively looking to improve Outlook, so hopefully those problems will eventually be fixed.

      It will potentially make a big difference in the short term, since designers will be able to stop inlining styles if they want to, which will be a big productivity win. It will help clean up the code and reduce style duplication and make the creation and maintenance of emails much, much better.

      2 points
  • Tim HartwickTim Hartwick, over 6 years ago

    Finally! No more inlined styles is going to be so nice.

    1 point
  • Tyce Clee, over 6 years ago

    'Bout time!

    1 point
  • Patrick Haney, over 6 years ago

    Curious to see if this includes the Gmail app for Android and iOS. CSS support is coming for "Gmail and Inbox" but that's about all the info we have for now.

    0 points
    • George Bartz, over 6 years ago

      That's the real question. I wonder how many people use gmail.com/inbox on their mobile browser. If the mobile apps don't support this, it's not a huge improvement.

      1 point
      • Jason RodriguezJason Rodriguez, over 6 years ago

        We'll see when it rolls out, but I suspect that the change is happening on their preprocessor/sanitizer that they use before emails even hit individual clients, so it should cover most of their email clients.

        1 point
        • Jameson Tyler, over 6 years ago (edited over 6 years ago )

          Exactly, as long as the styles aren't stripped, they should work fine within the iOS WebView. I assume that has rough parity with Mobile Safari.

          0 points
    • Tim HartwickTim Hartwick, over 6 years ago

      Agreed. The .gif in the announcement article looks like a native app, not sure exactly which one though.

      1 point
  • Luis La TorreLuis La Torre, over 6 years ago

    I am not sure what this mean really? I know What CSS Media queries are, but what does mean that Gmail will use them. Not everyone uses gmail. Please someone expand on this.

    0 points
    • Alex ChanAlex Chan, over 6 years ago (edited over 6 years ago )

      Gmail (website and mobile app) has never supported CSS media queries in HTML emails (see: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/). This made it really difficult for responsive email designs to adapt in the Gmail mobile apps and was generally a very frustrating thing to deal with (as are most things in the HTML email world).

      3 points
  • Max Quinn, over 6 years ago

    Thank god for that!

    My main gripe with Gmail at the minute is that they support -webkit-linear-gradient, but not -webkit-background-clip or -webkit-text-fill-color, so while gradient text degrades gracefully everywhere else it's impossible with gmail. So strange that it supports just that webkit property and not the others.

    0 points
  • Joann Weitervoh, over 6 years ago

    I think it's time.

    0 points