Gmail rendering HTML emails differently since June 15?

Phoebe Lee · June 2009

We've noticed that since yesterday, our HTML emails are rendering without any line spacing in gmail. This has occured retroactively on emails sent previously that had normal spacing and also on emails that were not sent through Convio. Is anyone else encountering this problem or does anyone have any idea what might be happening here?

Jonathan Budisantoso · June 2009

Not that I'm aware of, but I do know that Gmail renders all emails differently if you're using stylesheets to control the layout and look of the text (Step 2. when you're building out your stationary). Gmail doesn't allow for the <style> tag in the <head> or <body> tag. You'll have to place your styles inline. An example from one of my stationaries showing inline styling:

For more info on what CSS support there is in different email clients I've relied on this site: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

Louise Grindrod · June 2009

Jonathan Budisantoso:
Not that I'm aware of, but I do know that Gmail renders all emails differently if you're using stylesheets to control the layout and look of the text (Step 2. when you're building out your stationary). Gmail doesn't allow for the <style> tag in the <head> or <body> tag. You'll have to place your styles inline. An example from one of my stationaries showing inline styling:

<div id="email_wrap" style="margin: 0 auto; width: 601px;">

For more info on what CSS support there is in different email clients I've relied on this site: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

Something happened. We are suddenly experiencing the same problems. I've solved the lack of space between <P>'s by using <P style="margin: 1em 0"> , but text isn't wrapping around images properly. What a mess.

Can anyone shed light?

Sally Heaven · June 2009

Louise Grindrod:
Something happened. We are suddenly experiencing the same problems. I've solved the lack of space between <P>'s by using <P style="margin: 1em 0"> , but text isn't wrapping around images properly. What a mess.

Can anyone shed light?

This thread outlines the fix that you used and has another idea too:

http://community.customer.convio.com/thread/2832?tstart=0

You can try to use <BR><BR> and see if that fixes the problem with the text wrapping around images.

Here's the text from the thread:

This is a known issue with Gmail. Here are a couple of suggested work arounds:

1. To inline the CSS: <p style="margin: 1em 0"> ... </p>

2. To use 2 <br> tags in place of <p> tags.

(source: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=7eb0921146d1d4e6&hl=en)

Judi Sohn 2 · June 2009

Louise Grindrod:
Something happened. We are suddenly experiencing the same problems. I've solved the lack of space between <P>'s by using <P style="margin: 1em 0"> , but text isn't wrapping around images properly. What a mess.

Can anyone shed light?

Google now says they're "working on it" but they give no timeline for a fix. It's a huge pain if you use Feedburner Email subscriptions as well as Convio marketing, since we have absolutely no way of editing those Feedburner emails and some folks have complained.

As for text wrapping around images, try putting the CSS directly on the image tag, not the paragraph tag.

Example:



<img src="location.jpg" width="200" height="50" align="right" style="margin-left:0.5em;">

Matt Burghdoff 2 · June 2009

Gmail has started rendering differently, but for most marketers there shouldn't be much of a problem if you've been optimizing your emails to display in Yahoo - never read <p> tags to my knowledge. So far - granted, we've only done a couple of emails since the "improvement" - everything that normally worked in Yahoo is still working in Gmail. This gets annoying having to use <BR/><BR/> instead of a nice <p>, but it's the safest way to email. Hard-coding alignment, size, all that other good stuff in your image also helps out, though it gets time-consuming to do. Still, it's just job security for us email marketers.

You should also be checking your emails in Outlook and Hotmail, since those both have given me a number of headaches in the past - cell padding can be a nightmare with Outlook in particular.

Gmail rendering HTML emails differently since June 15?

Comments

Categories