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Introducing MailChimp’s Email Template Reference

Posted by Fabio on


When first I started working at MailChimp four years ago, I had never even coded an HTML email. Sure, I’d been involved in web design since the late ’90s, but emails are a different beast altogether. The learning curve was steep, in large part because documentation on the “art” of HTML email was scattered at best. There wasn’t a one-stop spot to get people up to speed.

When it comes to email development, the prevailing attitudes are confusion and frustration. We want to help change that. That’s what drove us to start this project, and now we have an HTML email reference to share with you.


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Keep High-Density Displays from Uglifying Your Emails

Posted by Fabio on


High pixel density displays are becoming more and more common, with Apple’s Retina display available on the iPhone 4S, iPad 3, and now the MacBook Pro, and also showing up in devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. There’s no denying that these new-era displays are gorgeous, but they’re not without fault: high-density displays can make your email ugly.

The reason for that ugliness is an increase in PPI, or Pixels Per Inch, the measurement of the number of pixels spread across an inch of screen space. As displays get better and better, this number climbs higher. This increase has doubled the CSS pixel ratio of these displays from 1 to 2 (quirksmode explains here), so that a high-density display now has double the resolution of an older one; in the case of an iPhone 4s you go from a resolution of 480×320 to one of 960×640 instead, on the same 3.5 inches of screen.

The increased definition makes the small images we all use across the web — icons, logos, etc. — look fuzzy and unfocused. There are several solutions for websites, and a pretty simple one that works well for email.

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