Why are the email and splash page editors different?

The email editor look very similar to where you can create your splash pages… but it’s also slightly different. What are the differences and why?

Limited fonts

The email editor only allows to use a few fonts. The reason behind it is that the vast majority of fonts are not displayed properly in email clients. That’s why we’re using system fonts, which are considered web-safe.

Additional text formatting options

While the selection of fonts is not really wide, there are numerous options of formatting them – changing the weight, cursive, etc. Why is that? With emails, as opposed to splash pages, we don’t really have to minimise the size of their content. Every formatting option for custom fonts doubles its initial size! What’s more, the web-safe fonts have the advantage of being already loaded in most cases.

Links and buttons

Splash pages are displayed during the login process. Users cannot really access the web until they’re finished with the authentication, so redirecting them to external sites is not an option. For emails that is no longer the case, so links are allowed and even encouraged. 😉

Different drag-and-drop behaviour

Believe it or not, emails created within the system are actually tables with invisible gridlines. Most email clients do not read the modern styling correctly and the most effective way for the email to remain aesthetically pleasing is to put everything in HTML tables. That’s why the email editor works differently than the one for splash pages.