• Home
  • About
Epic Whim
 
Skip to content
  • Home
  • About

Tag: coding quick tips

No comments

Coding Quick Tips: AOL Mail and the Mystery of the Missing Padding

  By David March 9, 2016 October 16, 2023 HTML Email

I ranted about the problems with HTML email last week, so here’s a great and bizarre funkiness that I just experienced, and the solution which will hopefully help someone.

Our story begins on a dark and stormy night bright and sunny day, when I was building an email for a client.  During Litmus tests, they had noticed a strange lack of padding around a certain content area…

aolissue

Left: Gmail. Right: AOL. (Client identity obscured)

…but only within AOL.

First thought: Who still uses AOL?  Answer: about 1% of people, as of 2014.  It’s amazingly still in the top ten, apparently.

Next question: Why?

I mean “why is it breaking?” (though why are people still using AOL is a good question, too).  Litmus has a cool new feature called “Builder,” which provides HTML email devs the opportunity to finally do what Dev Tools has allowed web developers to do for years: live tweaking in-engine.  So I loaded the HTML up, popped up the AOL renderer…and it wasn’t there.

The email looked fine.  Perfect, even.  Padding was right on.

So I chalked it up to some sort of hiccup in Litmus or in our server and ran a new test.  Right as I was about to send the update to the client, I looked at the AOL result.

No padding again.

So I loaded up the code:

...
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
 <tbody>
  <tr>
   <td align="left" valign="top" style="padding: 25px 20px 30px;"
   class="mob" style="">

    (...insert stuff here...)

   </td>
  </tr>
 </tbody>
</table>
...

Took me about a half-hour of agonizing before I figured it out. I’d been troubleshooting an error in a different part of the email, and to make things quick, I’d added a new “style” tag.

And apparently AOL, rather than adding all the CSS up before rendering it like everyone else does, just applies the last CSS received by the layout engine. Litmus’ Builder must do some CSS preprocessing before sending it to the AOL rendering engine, so I didn’t see it there.

So I removed the extra, empty ‘ style=”” ‘ and re-ran the test. Good as new.

Thanks, AOL, for contributing to my stress levels.

Tagged   coding quick tips, html email
  • RSS Reel World Theology

    • Releases, Returns, and Resurrections (ICYMI April 20, 2024) April 21, 2024 David Atwell
    • The Disney and Jon Favreau Show, featuring Me (ICYMI April 13, 2024) April 14, 2024 David Atwell
    • Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, and Science Fact (ICYMI April 6, 2024) April 6, 2024 David Atwell
    • Freaky Friday news; plus, Swift Quakes, Hot Takes, and Remakes (ICYMI March 30, 2024) March 30, 2024 David Atwell
  • Archives

    • February 2025
    • March 2024
    • February 2024
    • January 2024
    • December 2023
    • October 2023
    • July 2023
    • June 2023
    • May 2023
    • April 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • August 2022
    • August 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
  • Categories

    • ADHD
    • AI and Machine Learning
    • Current Events
    • Debunking
    • HTML Email
    • Indianapolis
    • Linkblog
    • Meta
    • Nintendo
    • PCA
    • Personal Updates
    • Politics
    • Redeeming Culture Meta
    • RPGs
    • Science
    • Sermons
    • Site News
    • Social Media
    • Technology
    • Theology
    • TV
    • Work Theory
    • Writing Prompt Responses
  • Recent Posts

    • Hope for the Future: Ding Dong, HB1136 is Dead
    • A Theological and Astronomical Fact Check
    • Linkblog | Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis
    • Linkblog | Jon Stewart Tackles The Biden-Trump Rematch That Nobody Wants | The Daily Show
    • A Lunar Itinerary
  • Recent Comments

    • David A. on INTEGRITAS
    • Carol thoma moore on INTEGRITAS
    • Cory Howell on Linkblog | Google apologizes for ‘missing the mark’ after Gemini generated racially diverse Nazis
    • Cory Howell on A Theological and Astronomical Fact Check
    • David A. on A Theological and Astronomical Fact Check
  • Archives

    • February 2025
    • March 2024
    • February 2024
    • January 2024
    • December 2023
    • October 2023
    • July 2023
    • June 2023
    • May 2023
    • April 2023
    • January 2023
    • December 2022
    • November 2022
    • October 2022
    • August 2022
    • August 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
  • Categories

    • ADHD
    • AI and Machine Learning
    • Current Events
    • Debunking
    • HTML Email
    • Indianapolis
    • Linkblog
    • Meta
    • Nintendo
    • PCA
    • Personal Updates
    • Politics
    • Redeeming Culture Meta
    • RPGs
    • Science
    • Sermons
    • Site News
    • Social Media
    • Technology
    • Theology
    • TV
    • Work Theory
    • Writing Prompt Responses
  • Meta

    • Log in
    • Entries feed
    • Comments feed
    • WordPress.org
  • Home
  • About
  The personal blog of David Atwell, the Redeeming Culture guy, coder, and overall geek.    
Powered by Parabola & WordPress.