Typically when you send out HTML emails, you are supposed to provide a plain text version also. So whatever the end user has their prefs set to, they get a legitimate looking email either way. I would do some more research on the subject. I'm not an expert...
That was sound, expert advice, actually. That is the proper way to handle the situation as developers. In a
single E-Mail both HTML and text versions may be specified using special headers and a boundary command for each. Then upon delivery the client mail reader will present whichever format the user has selected as their default view. This is the process. Below I've included an example of how it's done in actual code.
Developers first need to learn the various mail headers/boundary commands, then simply write a script that generates e-mail combining both formats, like this:
Code:
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 16:08:19 -0500
To: The Receiver <recipient@some.net>
From: The Sender <sender@some.net>
Subject: A simple mixed message
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="==Multipart_Boundary_xc75j85x"
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--==Multipart_Boundary_xc75j85x
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
This is the text portion of the mixed message.
--==Multipart_Boundary_xc75j85x
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<html>
<body>
<p>This is the <b>HTML portion</b> of the mixed message.</p>
</body>
</html>
--==Multipart_Boundary_xc75j85x--
See the differences in the Content-Type header, text/plain vs. text/html? And the mulitpart boundry used to separate the two formats? That's what it takes "under the hood" for all software to make the magic happen. As you can see some of the headers seem to be software generated with random data (re: boundary) plus the double equal signs and double dashes that have to be perfectly setup. This is intended to comply with strict email RFC standards.
There are many PHP classes out there that simplify the mail sending process so you can do things like this concentrating on the email content and not the RFC's.
Here is one called PHPMAILER, for example, use the one at the top. On that page are also other versions that not only send both formats, but allow powerful list serve functions for e-mail subscriptions and database recipient lists as well. It's an amazing set of classes. 5 out of 5 stars.
-jim
