The new newsletter is just about ready to go. After weeks of testing HTML-based e-mail on various systems (Outlook, Outlook Express, Yahoo!, Mozilla, AOL, AOL Webmail, Hotmail, Squirrelmail) I think we've got the basic formula down. The HTML is fairly simple and uses inline styles for presentation. I wanted to try and use current standards as much as possible. I think it just makes things easier. Display is either perfect or good enough on all tested platforms except Squirrelmail which, for some reason, displays the text version of the message. I think this is probably more due to administrative settings rather than support, but I haven't done extensive testing to figure it out. Plus this is the whole reason I went with multipart/alternative. At least I know that it works the way it's meant to if the HTML version is not displayed.
Everyone seems to be happy with the newsletter and the first issue will go out on Monday. I've run the newsletter through couple of different free SpamAssassin testers and it never came back with a rating high enough to cause concern, so I think we'll be ok on that part. I've also done what I can to adhere to the CAN-SPAM laws on this (and all other) mass mailings so we shouldn't run into problems there. I'm still not happy with the staff's penchant for mailing any address we can get our hands on. At least on the bright side we are not sending commercial mail and provide a true opt-out option.
