Simple Layouts and Tables Work Best

Simple Layouts and Tables Work Best
You wouldn’t believe all the different ways email applications garble up HTML email.
You’ll need to keep your email designs nice and simple. Avoid complicated layouts, too
many embedded tables, and tables with too many rows and columns. A simple two
column table with a row across the top is about as complex as you can get. There are
lots of email applications that don’t cooperate when you code tables with colspans
(table cells that “span” across multiple columns) in them. One application that’s
particularly finicky when it comes to tables (and just about everything else) is Lotus
Notes. We can’t stress it enough. You’ve got to keep your layouts very, very simple, if
you want it to work across all the major email apps.
If you’re working on an email layout and find the tables are getting complex, and you’re
having to code too many “COLSPANS,” you might think about chopping it up into
separate tables. For instance, we almost always use separate tables for the header,
body, then footer of our emails. Better to go with more “simple” tables, than one big
“complex” table.
If you’re a CSS ninja, you’re probably rolling your eyes in disdain with all this “TABLES”
talk. But trust us --- you’re not going to be able to use all that cool, timesaving CSS stuff in your HTML emails. DIVs and CSS-positioning don’t work. We’ll cover that later in this
guide.