The discussion revolves around creating a roadmap for styling email digests in Discourse. amitfrid initiated the conversation, emphasizing the need for RTL (Right-To-Left) support in emails and the possibility of adding custom CSS and JS. Sander78 pointed out that CSS can be used in emails through inline styling.
sam suggested that amitfrid experiment with implementing CSS inlinification using available tools, and amitfrid agreed to start working on it. sam proposed a plan to add support for an “email.css” file that can be overridden, with the goal of applying CSS styling inline.
downey cautioned about the complexities of email styling, highlighting the varying levels of CSS support across different email clients and providing resources for those unfamiliar with email styling.
Continuing the discussion from Styling email digest:
Hey,
In a more general way, I would really appreciate any roadmap for email styling. Since html emails don’t support css there isn’t any option to style them.
My first priority is supporting RTL, as discussed here: https://meta.discourse.org/t/css-customisation-for-rtl/10614/2
As a lower priority I would like to be able to add arbitrary customisations, CSS and JS.
Thanks.
Oh, but there is. Inline. But you probably mean you need a way to implement that CSS into the mail.
Yes, basically. Or, a way to customise it in a more conservative way, like with specific site setting.
As I said, I mostly interested in RTL support for emails.
Are you a dev, do you want to experiment with this in a branch. There is plenty of tooling out there that “inlinifies” css which we could leverage.
Yhea, I am.
Just with limited time and knowledge in Ruby…
I plan to start experiment with this in the next couple of days/weeks.
Do yo think that the list build here can be a baseline to start a discussion about it? (one of the items is email styling)
I think “applying CSS styling to Email” is a much narrower feature than full blown RTL support. I think you can just discuss here, before coding, outline your plan so we can make sure it looks sane.
At a top level I would simply add support for an “email.css” (containing default styling) that can be overridden. The tricky thing is taking the css file and applying it inline, but there are a few gems that do this which you could leverage.
OK, sounds like a plan, thanks.
I suppose for some folks it goes without saying, but be super careful when working on CSS for e-mail. Someone mentioned only inline CSS is supported, but technically that’s only true in Gmail’s web client; other clients have “better” support.
Different clients also vary widely on what CSS style elements they support.
Here are some good resources for someone not familiar with the dealing with e-mail styling: