I'm working on an in-house email notification system that sends personalized emails, and we're looking to improve the email UI. One suggestion that came up is adding a "view in browser" link in the footer. However, I'm curious if there's a way to make the email render in the browser upon clicking the link without actually hosting the email content. Is there a feasible method for this?
3 Answers
In short, it's probably not a great idea to skip hosting. The main purpose of the 'view in browser' feature is to ensure trust. It should tie back to a secure link where users can retrieve a fresh copy of the email from a reliable source. You’d typically want a database entry for each email generated, and then render it through a web service to serve safe, browser-optimized HTML.
A good question to ask is why the client wants this feature in the first place. What exactly are they trying to achieve?
That's a fair point! The client wants a safe fallback for viewing, mainly due to how some designs can get messed up in Outlook's rendering engine. It makes sense to want a browser view for consistency.
To be honest, it seems like you need to host the email somewhere. Even if you avoid external hosting, you'll end up inflating the email size by including the entire content. You could technically use dataURIs, but keep in mind that browsers like Chrome may handle them up to 2MB, while Outlook typically blocks them altogether. It's not a foolproof solution.
I appreciate your insight! But yeah, considering Outlook's restrictions, dataURIs don't seem like a viable option.
I see your point about trust and security. But back in my day, these links offered a guarantee that the email layout would look right since many couldn't design proper emails. Today, though, things have definitely improved!