Do your email newsletters look right in Gmail?
The world of email clients is constantly changing, especially when it comes to webmail. Google recently updated Gmail and it’s pretty cool. The UI is super clean, and you can set themes which have different backgrounds. I’m a huge fan of Gmail as a user, but it’s not always fun to build email newsletters for it. The newest issue is due to the semi transparent background which allows users to set backgrounds. It looks great, and really allows us to customize our email experience, but it can leave you email newsletters looking a bit odd if you have not taken the right steps.
Google Maps api and iPad/iPhone zoom and scale issues when orientation is changed
I recently bought an iPad and I’m absolutely loving it. It also happened to coincide with an exciting project that I’m working on that requires the Google maps API to work on an iPad. The project required a full screen map, but when switching from landscape to portrait or vice versa the zoom level would be off. The Google maps controls would also be off the page, page graphics were also blurry due to being zoomed, even the Google Map itself was blurry. After much tweaking, fiddling and scratching my head, the fix turned out to be quite simple to fix.
Using Twitter for instant social news
This may sound obvious for some, but I am still surprised by how many people have underlooked or forgotten a major feature in Twitter, the Twitter search engine. Twitter search is also built into many clients and the search engine has become an invaluable tool for sharing instant news. The great thing is you don’t even need a Twitter account to benefit from social news.
Moving your Drupal site and breaking all the links
This is a quick tip for anyone moving their Drupal site. I recently moved a development site to a live site and have done this on several occasions only to be left sitting their scratching my head wondering why only the home page of my Drupal site works. Each time after a few minutes it hits me that the .htaccess file is the culprit and that I did not move it. Often if you upload your files via some ftp programs you may not actually be able to see the .htaccess file to upload it. To see it on a Linux/UNIX box type ls -la and it will show up. FileZilla is an open source FTP program that will also do the trick.
So remember after you upload the files to your new server, import your database data and change your database credentials to also bring along your .htaccess file or just grab it from a Drupal package. Hope this saves some of you some head scratching.
Anchor links in Gmail and email newsletters
I usually recommend against using anchor links in email newsletters; the reason for this is twofold.
First, when someone is viewing a newsletter their attention span is probably extremely short. They probably want to get onto their next email, but something has triggered their interest in your newsletter. Why waste that interest on jumping them further down the email, this is your chance to grab their attention and hook them into your website. It may be your last chance before they click onto their next email and your website is probably a much richer web experience anyway.
