Highlights below on Mobile Compatibility that should be considered:
Summary:
- HTML: most now support HTML rendering!
- Images: still blocked, except on iPhone/iPad.
- Alt-text: Only Android will display alt-text behind a blocked image.
- Preview Text: Has gained a ton of traction in recent months. It shows up right after the subject line, and pulls in the first few lines of live text from your email to give readers a “snippet” of what’s in the email.
- Scale: Think of this space as the preview pane.
- Modify Fonts:Reading email on a tiny screen is hard. Every mobile OS will modify your fonts to some degree (learn to accept that your fonts may not be the size or shape you intended)
Mobile email compatibility basics like image blocking, preview text, alt text, and more. Use this guide as you’re planning out your next campaign:
HTML: This column is an indication of native HTML support on the device. The great news is that most modern mobile operating systems support HTML and CSS,
Images:While HTML support in mobile is mostly good news, the bad news is that image blocking is back in a big way. The only mobile OS that doesn’t block images by default is the iPhone/iPad. All’s not lost, though. Of those devices that block images, most offer a big touch-friendly button to turn them on.
Alt Text:If you’ve been designing email for the desktop for a while, you’re probably a master at the fine art of alt text. Unfortunately, only Android will display alt-text behind a blocked image.
Preview Text:Preview text has gained a ton of traction in recent months due to it’s prevalence in Outlook, Gmail and the iPhone. It shows up right after the subject line, and pulls in the first few lines of live text from your email to give readers a “snippet” of what’s in the email. It’s a great way to pack more punch in your email, and it will show up in iOS devices as well as Windows Mobile 7.
Scale:While the iPhone zooms into your email and fits the email to the width of your screen, most other devices will display the upper left-hand corner of your email, leaving users to scroll left-and-right in addition to up-and-down to view your entire message. You could think of this space as the preview pane, reborn for the mobile age.
Modify Fonts:Reading email on a tiny screen is hard. Every mobile OS will modify your fonts to some degree, although it’s a bit of a mixed bag. iPhone and iPad have a 13px minimum font size and will auto-adjust anything under that size, often breaking navigation bars and other tiny text. The folks over at Campaign Monitor wrote up a post on how to fix this using a bit of CSS. In other devices, I observed text being condensed, breaking at random intervals and other unfriendly behaviors, but nothing that seemed consistent or predictable. The best course of action is to plan for unruly text behavior in your design, and learn to accept that your fonts may not be the size or shape you intended.
Test your emails and find out. Use this site: http://litmus.com/email-testing
Source is from Litmus. They have a lot on this subject, so checkout their website at http://litmus.com