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fonziguy

409 karma · joined April 26, 2011

Designer. Developer.
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fonziguy··on Show HN: Postdrop – quickly test and copy responsive HTML emails with inline CSS
HTML emails are hard and cumbersome. With all the different email clients out there with different rendering engines and inconsistencies it’s not as easy as using modern HTML and CSS.

Postdrop helps by giving you a ready to go template and inlines your CSS so you can copy the output into your codebase or ESP. Send a test to yourself or colleagues to insure it works as expected in your email client or on your device.

This started as simple personal tool and now it has evolved to support user accounts so you can save and test all your templates in one place.

fonziguy··on Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
I share the sentiment and think there’s a balance.

The problem is a lot of marketers or designers go overboard with HTML emails and they’re overly designed with visuals and graphics in an attempt to look good or match their brand.

Using actual plain text is a bit of a pendulum swing in the other direction though and really restricts things, including the fact you can’t add tracking pixels to get the analytics you might need.

An HTML email that is “designed” to still look like plain text strikes a good balance I think. Allows for some visual type hierarchy improvements, allows for links with clear anchor text and utm tags and any tracking pixels you need. Easier for you the developer to maintain. While at the same time isn’t distracting to the user.

fonziguy··on MailChimp vs. Amazon SES – How I Reduced My Monthly Bill
Check out this Grunt workflow https://github.com/leemunroe/grunt-email-workflow

Automates most of the painful tasks of putting an email together. You could also add a task that sends the templates to Mailchimp once built.

fonziguy··on Show HN: Real time CSS inliner for emails with live preview
Even in 2017, and even with recent Gmail improvements, it is still a best practice to inline your CSS before sending email to ensure they don't fall apart in one of the many clients out there. This tool inlines your styles in real time and provides a handy preview so you can see what's happening.
fonziguy··on Lessons Learned from Responsive Email Design
Building HTML email is hard. Building responsive HTML email is even harder. But email opens on mobile are at 50% and rising. Hoping this article shares some useful advice and lessons learned.
fonziguy··on Responsive HTML Email Templates
Awesome, glad to hear that!
fonziguy··on Responsive HTML Email Templates
Hey, this is Lee. Correct. The simple responsive email template is free and open source. If you have the time, or don't have the budget, you could definitely use this as a starting point and create the rest of the templates on top of this. It took me more than a few hours though :-)
fonziguy··on Responsive HTML Email Templates
Hi, Lee here, I created BOTH of email templates you're referring to. In fact you can use my Grunt workflow to create more https://github.com/leemunroe/grunt-email-workflow/

There are several differences with the templates for sale on HTMLemail.io: More layouts, a 6 column grid, better responsive support for mobile (including Gmail apps), includes high resolution image assets for social media and app store buttons, better support across all clients including Gmail and Outlook.

fonziguy··on Responsive HTML Email Templates
Hey Matt, Lee here the creator of the templates. I've open sourced a simple basic email here (https://github.com/leemunroe/responsive-html-email-template) and also my Grunt workflow for building emails (https://github.com/leemunroe/grunt-email-workflow) if you'd like to take it for a spin.
fonziguy··on Show HN: Responsive HTML Email Templates for Developers
Email is hard. Responsive email is even harder. Developers and startups often need the same set of templates to send out with their service so I put these together.
fonziguy··on Show HN: Simple Responsive HTML Email Template v1.0
HTML email is still way harder than it should be. So I put together this basic responsive email template and just recently updated so there is better support across more clients. Enjoy.
fonziguy··on Beginners Guide to Sending Email for Web Designers and Developers
Brain dump of notes and lessons learned for those that have little experience working with email.
fonziguy··on Ask HN: What's your email design/development workflow like?
[1] http://www.leemunroe.com/email-design-workflow/
fonziguy··on Show HN: A Grunt workflow for designing and testing HTML emails
Using the premailer gem for inlining CSS. Agreed would be nice not to have that dependency. Played with other solutions but couldn't find one as good.
fonziguy··on Ask HN: Which SaaS apps have the best UI?
I really like Stripe (http://stripe.com) and have always been a fan of Campaign Monitor (http://campaignmonitor.com). We've been making lots of subtle design iterations to Mailgun (http://mailgun.com) recently too.

Also I'd recommend checking out LeanStack.io (http://leanstack.io) which has a great list of SaaS companies. You might find some inspiration there.

fonziguy··on Stop making me sign up
Absolutely. I think Chartbeat does a good job of showing you the product before signing up https://chartbeat.com/demo and also https://www.intercom.io/ have a great gradual engagement flow (where they actually need data to work effectively).
fonziguy··on Show HN: Real time code sharing and video chat (WebRTC)
There's no way to search CodeShares so only people who know the URL can access it. And only the latest instance is saved (using Firebase) so you can always delete the code once you're done with it.
fonziguy··on Sell HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell?
http://twitamore.com

Fun/silly website for Valentine's Day. Tells you who you love on Twitter. Gets about 500k pageviews/mth 100k visits/mth and spikes on Valentine's Day with coverage from the likes of Huffington Post and TNW.

50-70% of traffic is from Saudi Arabia, which is interesting.

Gets a tonne of tweets a day if you search for #twitamore https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=%23twitamore&src=t...

I figure it would make a good marketing campaign for a company on Valentine's Day 2014 if they wanted to theme it.

fonziguy··on All seats to fly to space are $200k
Click on "Reservations Options explained"
fonziguy··on Share live code snippets in your browser
Oh I see. Firebase is the magic behind that https://www.firebase.com/
fonziguy··on Share live code snippets in your browser
Hmm probably not feature wise. This was hacked together on the train. One advantage though is sharing code quickly (no download or reg) in any browser.
fonziguy··on Share live code snippets in your browser
I like it, good thinking
fonziguy··on Share live code snippets in your browser
You should see a code editor, that looks like Sublime, that you can write or paste code into. What browser are you using?
fonziguy··on Share live code snippets in your browser
I will definitely. Needs some clean up first.
fonziguy··on Share live code snippets in your browser
Should work better now
fonziguy··on Share live code snippets in your browser
Looks like a bug on first select. Should be easy fix.
fonziguy··on Runnable – Edit, run, and share code in your browser
Looks like Webshell is integrating APIs into your site, while Runnable is about API discovery, prototyping, learning from others (more of a Stack Overflow direction).
fonziguy··on Show HN: Share your side projects
http://flask.io for quick to do lists.

I hacked this together and just shipped it.

There are plenty of task management apps out there but you don't have to sign up or download anything to start using this one.