HTML Template in Emails.

[Dragosvr92]

What does everyone think about including a html template, in the emails received from a phpbb forum ?

It could make use of the board css.

[Danielx64]

No as it could make the email bigger than it need to be IMO

[callumacrae]

+1, as phpBB emails are pretty ugly.

[ForumsFaciles]

+1, I'd like to see this implemented.

[brunoais]

I didn't understand...You mean to have a template of the e-mails sent to the user?

[imkingdavid]

He means styling the emails to make them look like they were sent from the board. Currently, iirc, they are just plain text.

It could make use of the board css.

Would it use the default board style or would it go through each user to determine which style they use and then use that CSS? Also, how would it determine which rules to use from that stylesheet? We would probably need to create a new stylesheet file that contains only the rules that would be needed for emails. Of course that's just extra work for each style author.

Anyway, I'm not sure how I feel about this. Some emails (from the stone age) cannot accept HTML. Other people might have HTML turned off in their email address's settings. If we implement this, we should provide another UCP option to determine whether or not the user wishes to receive HTML or plain text emails.

[Dragosvr92]

Yep, they are plain text.

I am not entirely sure... I guess it should use the style the user has defined in his UCP.
Maybe they should chose what css template they want on their emails, same like the board style?

It should mainly get the background, text colour, from the body element. link colours etc.....
Whatever the template should look like.. It should use only css from the board, no round corners images, as the images might be missing..

I guess it would be simpler to create a new email.css file for it tho... Then users would have to include the new file into their style, and put the colours they need..? Or.. as you said, the style authors would have to fix it.

You are right. They should be able to chose if they want the html template or prefer to be old school and use the plain text.

[DavidIQ]

I think emails should at least be sent as HTML and links formatted as such. The recent actions of Apple with their patents have forced HTC to do silly stuff with their Android 4.x email software which means that links in phpBB emails don't actually turn to links because we send emails as plain text. There are ways around this like rooting and such but not everyone wants to do that to their mobile phones.

[Jocelyn79]

I agree, I would like my board to be able to send HTML emails with some styling, instead of plain-text old-looking emails.
There could be a board-wide setting and a user-setting for choosing between text emails or HTML emails.

[Dragosvr92]

Btw, at the moment phpbb sends emails with no sender name. Just the website domain name.
It should add the forum title as a sender, or the board owner name. wordpress uses the title Wordpress, as sender..
Maybe you could add some check boxes for this two options, and a checkbox that lets you type a different title. Or use a drop down selection menu instead of check boxes..