Every couple of months or so, developers at work have to rebuild some HTML email templates and turn to my team and ask the inevitable question, “Do we have HTML email standards?”.

“They aren’t complete” is my usual answer as I flashback to my last attempt at painfully coding up an HTML template and trying to figure out the best format for maximum consistency across the multitude of email clients.

The next step is to usually forget it ever happened and move on to something else. In the end all of us developers usually end up collecting half complete, partially working templates that hibernate on our local drives and never really see the light of day.

I am relieved to see someone finally confronting those demons and starting some definitive email standards documentation in one central repository as well as developing some great testing and benchmarking for current email clients.

Brought to you by Fresh View, Luke Stevens and Mark Wyner. These guys have kicked off a project that will hopefully raise awareness of the need for web standards and accessibility in email and to also try to change things on the email client developers side…

The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.

Awesome work guys, head on over to the Email Standards Project and show your support for this great project.