Re: Sending "pretty" email

At 07:49 AM 3/11/01 , Richard Scott Crawford wrote:

The first thing to do is to take two aspirin and lie down until the temptation to do this passes. It may be cool, but those of us who use Eudora or Pine for our e-mail don't read HTML-encoded mail, don't *want* to read HTML-encoded mail, and get really annoyed when it shows up in our mailboxes.

I generally agree, but there is... ONE GOOD USE FOR HTML EMAIL: AOL DUMMIES. REASON: When I would send my email list a URL I needed them to go to, I would do it in plain-text. ("Go to www.something.com and do something.") And because 90% of the email programs out there automatically make it a hyperlinked URL, there was no problem - *EXCEPT* the AOL people who would email back stupid things like, "Sounds interesting! What's the web address?" SOLUTION: When you're sending email using PHP, try this: if (strtolower(strstr($email, '@'))=="aol.com") { $link1 = '<a href="http://www.something.com/">www.something.com</a>'; $link2 = '<a href="http://www.otherthing.com/">www.otherthing.com</a>'; } else { $link1 = 'www.something.com'; $link2 = 'www.otherthing.com'; } $message = "Hey $firstname - Check out this link! " . $link1 . " and also this one... " . $link2 . " Enoy!"; mail ($email, $subject, $message, $headers); That way the AOL dummies get their hyperlinked HTML links, and all the cool people of the world get the regular simple version.