While it would be much simpler for online publishers, not everyone out there is wanting to receive content via RSS. Keeping this in mind, we need to make sure that we have a firm grasp on creating good looking HTML email.

If you are starting out as small potatoes, then chances are that you are the main person running the show on your publishing endeavor. Thankfully folks like Tim Slavin have written articles like this one to get you on the path to creating proper HTML email without tripping over those common mistakes that so many of make.

For programmers, however, coding HTML email newsletters can be a mixed bag of joy, misery, and pain.

The biggest misery is that some email software programs slice your precious code into their overly elaborate and inscrutable HTML formats and CSS styles.

By far the greatest challenge is that people use many different software tools to read their email, from Eudora to Outlook, AOL to Thunderbird, LotusNotes to Web-based services such as Yahoo! and Hotmail. Worse, Webmail services like Hotmail use CSS stylesheets that overwrite the styles you use in your HTML email newsletter, messing up your design.

I have found very little information that describes the differences between email clients, for example, how well they support HTML, XHTML, and CSS. I find even less information that explains how to code with HTML and CSS an email newsletter that will display intact in most — if not all — email clients