Why is the email template so narrow?

Is there any reason the content of emails has to be locked to 600 pixels wide?

This may be great when reading on a smart phone or other narrow device, but it seems to be a waste of real-estate when viewed on a larger tablet or a laptop or desktop monitor. I mean, it really doesn’t look good on these larger displays.

Mike

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Auto Justifying would be good.

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I just asked and was told that it’s a basic emails standard. Suggested for the best email appearance across screens.

Do you realize you’ve referenced an 11-year old post? A lot has changed since then. Check out the comment dates here: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2005/04/maximum-width-for-html-emails/

Perhaps something a bit more current and relevant…? https://litmus.com/community/discussions/1142-email-maximum-width-still-600px

“The legacy has to do with @Elliot’s reminder of app UI chrome. The ~600px range was calculated over 10 years ago from Windows Outlook on the (then) popular 1024px desktop monitor. 92.23% of desktop resolution is now over 1280px. 44.61% is over 1600px.”

Best practice or not, when I view these on my 22" screen in 1920x1080… I have nothing for miles on both side of my email. Which ensures that it does not look like I want it to look.

And yet, TroopTrack emails from discourseemail.com are strangely NOT limited to 600 pixels wide and look wonderful on both my monitors, iphone, Kindle, etc.

Do you think it’s possible that the widths could be designed to be dynamic, filling all available territory, or compressing down as needed for those reading on an iphone? Wouldn’t that satisfy all readers instead of just those on mobile devices?

Mike

Thanks for the references. We’d be glad to consider it. I just pulled the first reference I saw to it and told you what the team said.

Thanks again for the suggestion!

Thanks for the conversation - it was an idle thought - I’d rather the developers spend time on the other issues right now, so I won’t be submitting this as an idea for them to work on, at least not right away. (But if they spontaneously decided to cause this update to rain down on me, I’d be as pleased as pie).

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I like the idea of improving the email template. Email templates are a total pain, and it’s been a while since we messed with it. I’m going to move this over to ideas.

We’d probably just replace the existing template with a newer one that includes resizing. You can purchase them from third party designers fairly cheaply. I think the development work of replacing the template and testing it out would be about $400.

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