Can I use Foundation 6 Stacks on Email Stacks?

Classic General
21

Sorry, I can’t work out what “Images don’t scale” means from those videos. Can you explain?

What I can tell you about images and email HTML is you need to be precise, and in the case if Outlook it’s always best to make the image the actual size needed, opposed to resizing it using settings.

In terms of the colour issue, are we talking about the block that should be yellow but it actually brown? Can you screenshot the settings for that?

Logo not centred is possibly due to the way the image has been added to the project and the email client being used to produce that demo image. So again, need to see settings to help further.

What will really help is if you can share that project?

There is a lot in Email Stacks that doesn’t work consistently across all email clients, sadly, that’s just a reality of HTML for the various clients. Unlike browsers, there is no “standard”. Outlook is a nightmare to work with. For instance it will ingore padding and margin added to images, but will support some margin and padding added to some containers. In Email Stacks, it ignores bottom margin added to buttons but not other elements. And so on.

On top of that there are also various things in Email Stacks that just doesn’t work, at all, but that’s just the nature of the beast, and there is normally a workaround.

I’m not one of the Joe Workman fanboys so don’t/won’t pretend everything he does is perfect. I also don’t buy into his “everything I do is awesome” marketing, but to give him his dues, Email is really very good. I’ve been doing HTML newsletters for 20 years and in that time have tried almost everything. Email is still constantly one of the best I’ve used and miles cheaper that loads.

You just need to understand you are producing HTML that is going to be read in things (email clients) that just don’t/won’t play nice with modern HTML, so you have to get creative.

As web designers we’ve all gotten used to browsers almost perfectly rendering whatever code we throw at them no matter how rubbish our code is. Email clients don’t work like this sadly.

I work in Email Stacks almost daily, so I’ve a better understanding of it’s limitations than many, but that said, there is almost nothing I can’t get it to do, it’s just a case of experimenting.

The only thing I can’t get it to do is to make most email clients support non-web safe fonts, because that can’t be done.

3 Likes
22

I said this before and I say it again, some devs here (not all of them) I repeat, some of the developers here aren’t taking freelancers seriously. They simply ignore our needs and move on. Why I say this? Months back one of the devs told me to register at Udemy.com to learn html/css because I didn’t know how everything works behind the scenes. Comments like that simply let you understand that there’s a prejudice mentality for intermediate users that no longer use Rapidweaver for themselves.

Other developers run the extra mile to help you get there and they are superheroes for the rest of all. Without them I don’t know where the stability of my business were as of today. That’s why I always use Rapidweaver and support their community. Do what I do, keep the devs that really respect you and help you and stop supporting the ones that just want your money but don’t want to help.

I used to have Mail Designer for a long time until they went subscription. Let see how it goes with Foundation html Mail stacks. Until now so far so good.

1 Like
23

Well said.

24

Images don’t scale

Of course @TemplateRepo , in the YouTube video, Joe changes image dimensions using those properties, in my video, those properties do nothing. After raising a ticket to Joe, he literally said those properties don’t work! I replied “You are using them in your demo and even if that’s true, why include them in the stack if they don’t work ?!”

Color
Box is a callout, color is set at the Email styles here

Image alignement
I created a loom video here , showcasing again that an image is not scaling and then an image set to align left, is aligning in the middle

That’s my point @TemplateRepo, there are email no-code composers out there that just work, without any further explorations nor wasting time troubleshooting and they are free btw

25

As I said, if you can share the project or at the least screenshot your settings I can try to help.

26

Here is the project file
Here is the expected result: Logo aligns left with “There is no joy without sugar”. Logo is automatically fetched from client’s ftp and scaling is applied.

27

When you say that is the expected result, do you mean that is how you want the end result to look. If so, some of that isn’t possible. If you tell me how you want it to look I’ll make a template for you, but you need to keep it within what is actually possible with HTML for newsletters, in terms of layout etc.

Couple of other things…

  1. The logo you are using is 3840x2880, so that will need changing to the actual size you want. If you are going to have it spanning the entire width, I’d make it about 550px wide. If hald the width, 225px, and so on.
  2. The image is a webp. These don’t work in lots of email clients, so it’ll need converting to a jpg.
  3. The way you’ve got the text in the yellow callout setup is odd. You’ve a wrapper inside the callout with a lot of padding on the right. It’s an odd way to do it, and I don’t really understand the reason.
  4. You’ve put an icon for “Watch now” link, not actually sure how you did that, but pretty sure that won’t work in most email clients.

If you can tell/show me how you want it laid out, I’ll do a template for you, but you won’t be able to get it exactly as that image above, so you’ll need to rethink that a bit, if that is how you want it to look.

EDIT: Very quickly though: If that image linked above is how you want it to look, this is as close as you will get. Not tested on Outlook, but should work. (I resized the logo)

https://www.dropbox.com/t/sBlXPXr2iymWvDeE

4 Likes
28

Apologies for the typos. I was in a rush. Sorry!

29

Palitino is one of the best fonts anyway, due to its “x” height., I have been using it along with only a couple more fonts for book publishing 20 odd years going, especially when I want text to be easy on the eyes.

30

Hah @APSS! I can trump you there. I’ve been working in book publishing for 44 years and I’ve been using Palatino quite a lot during that time, so I’m a little bored of it. It’s a great face, though. There are others I’d sometimes prefer to use if I weren’t restricted by email client problems.

31

Hey, fellow book creator. For some reason I start loving Palitino again, just give it sufficient leading and rarely go over 11 (11.75) points. But I alternate between Adobe Caslon Pro and the sweet little family named Mrs. Eaves.

But for web safe eMail, of course, that’s a different story. I am only just starting to work with Joe Workman’s email plugin, so I will see what works in due time.

32

Good luck with that one. Joe’s a great guy but his stacks are designed for treasure hunters (with encrypted codes and easter eggs to find in the long run :joy: )

33

In case you want to try something different, @Doobox has a free app called mailshot.

I’ve never tried it(never had the need), but I understand it does a pretty nice job. It’s FREE, so you might give it a try.

https://doobox.co.uk/apps/app_demos/mailshot.html

1 Like
34

No comment! :shushing_face: I have a garage full of Joe’s stack, I mean outside garage full collected over the years…and I may just have to park this one there in the next week or two if this project does not work.

From I came upon Ulkit from @Lucas, there’s no turning back, though pulling every now and then on Foundry.

So long follow fellow creator.

2 Likes
35

UIkit sounds like a good alternative. I will F6 a try for the last time and see where it take me.

36

@APSS Monica glad you’ll enjoying UIkit :grinning:

37

Addicted rather :hugs:

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38

Let’s keep this thread on point… :upside_down_face:

@TemplateRepo Thanks for the assist! I appreciate that.

@stathisaska I hope that you are good to go now. As Steve said, deigning for email is very different than designing for the web.

@Albertkinng As my track record proves, I am always here to help.

3 Likes
39

“I hope that you are good to go now” LMAO
you’re hilarious @joeworkman I wish one day we can go fishing together, I pay the charter boat.

40

@TemplateRepo I really appreciate you took the time to play around with the example I sent. I know it’s not possible using Joe’s Email stack, but high-level things like image scaling and alignment work on other email design tools. I don’t know if they work in Outlook 1997, but they do work in all modern major clients I have tested, like Microsoft Outlook, Email.app, Airmail and cloud mail Microsoft, Google.

I understand the limitations of the email client, but I have found other tools that handle those limitations to the possible extension. View demo opens url in the browser, it works also in this example, not sure why you pointed it out.

I will once again highlight the fact that in this video (7:14 already set to load at that time) @joeworkman says and I quote

And I can go ahead and set the dimensions of that image so that it scales properly, okay

A marketed functionality, doesn’t work. If that reason doesn’t qualify for a refund, well what does ?

I am not judging @joeworkman nor his Foundation framework, nor any other projects. I without hesitation acknowledge his colossal contribution to what RapidWeaver has become over the years.

I am just saying that the support, value(-) and customer experience I got from that product was the worst. Also worths mentioning here that he responded to the support ticket I raised a week after I submitted it, a day after I requested a refund through PayPal.

Anyhow, it seems like everyone has made his points clear and no-one has provided an answer on why Joe can go ahead and scale the image properly when we can’t, so I can conclude this conversation by wishing to everyone a Happy Memorial Day and -until next time- keep safe