Skip to main content

Email on Acid: Newsletter testing and simulation on virtual email clients

If you offer email newsletters as a subscription option to your site visitors, you must be aware that newsletters use HTML emails to carry the content to the subscriber’s inbox and those HTML mails use a code that is entirely different from the code you used on your site. But testing newsletters isn’t so straightforward as testing sites on different browsers. You have to create accounts on different email services and mail your newsletter to each of these. Then you have to login to all these account to test your mail. Similarly, you have to install various email clients on your computer and then download your newsletter to each of these clients.

Email on Acid is a new web service that provides an easier method to test newsletters. No need to login to different email providers or install a bunch of email clients. You can test and simulate each these services and email software online.

Email on Acid is free. Just signup for the service and copy the HTML code of your newsletter and paste it on the appropriate box to run the simulation. If your newsletter can be accessed via a URL, you can enter the link too.

email-on-acid

Email on Acid uses specific algorithms to strip out code that is not supported by each client and then display the end result inside the email client preview pane so that you can see exactly how it would render within the actual client. The code analysis feature allows you to see exactly how each individual email client interpreted your code. Pieces of unsupported code are marked in red allowing you to make appropriate adjustments.

email-on-acid-code2

Some users block HTML mails. To see how your newsletter appear for such users you can switch to text mode. You can also block images from the newsletter.

An array of tabs located on the top of the page allow you to toggle back and forth from one client to the next. Supported email services include Gmail, AOL, Yahoo and Windows Live Hotmail, and supported email clients are Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, Thunderbird 2 and 3, Windows Live Client, Windows Mail, Entourage 4 and 8 (Mac), and MacMail (Mac).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to Record CPU and Memory Usage Over Time in Windows?

Whenever the computer is lagging or some application is taking too long to respond, we usually fire up task manager and look under the Performance tab or under Processes to check on processor utilization or the amount of free memory available. The task manager is ideal for real-time analysis of CPU and memory utilization. It even displays a short history of CPU utilization in the form of a graph. You get a small time-window, about 30 seconds or so, depending on how large the viewing area is.

How to Schedule Changes to Your Facebook Page Cover Photo

Facebook’s current layout, the so called Timeline, features a prominent, large cover photo that some people are using in a lot of different creative ways. Timeline is also available for Facebook Pages that people can use to promote their website or business or event. Although you can change the cover photo as often as you like, it’s meant to be static – something which you design and leave it for at least a few weeks or months like a redesigned website. However, there are times when you may want to change the cover photo frequently and periodically to match event dates or some special promotion that you are running or plan to run. So, here is how you can do that.

Diagram 101: Different Types of Diagrams and When To Use Them

Diagrams are a great way to visualize information and convey meaning. The problem is that there’s too many different types of diagrams, so it can be hard to know which ones you should use in any given situation. To help you out, we’ve created this diagram that lays out the 7 most common types of diagrams and when they’re best used: