Genii Weblog

Rendering mail well includes degrading well

Thu 10 Jan 2019, 03:38 PM



by Ben Langhinrichs
Continuing on from yesterday's post, I should emphasize that the best rendering in the world only works if the target supports the CSS and HTML that make up the page. When we are talking about email that goes outside of your Notes network, even to others within your company who may be reading on Gmail or Outlook 365 or a mobile device, not everything is supported that you might find in a web page on a modern browser. Therefore, when CoexLinks Fidelity renders an email to MIME to leave Notes, it has to build in logic to allow it to degrade gracefully and minimally.

All of the following except the first are rendered to MIME by CoexLinks Fidelity, and then sent out through the normal Domino channels. There are many other email clients or devices, but this should give a sense of what kind of degradations might be expected and how they are handled. As an example, in Office 365, the background of the table rows that are gradients is set to whichever of the gradient colors best contrasts with the text within. The PC Gmail and two mobile examples are all from the same email displayed in various ways.

When we can't make it perfect, we make it as good as possible. In all our products.

Request eval of the Midas LSX (programmability) or CoexLinks Fidelity (email) or AppsFidelity (web/mobile rendering) 


Notes client (rich text)
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Gmail on Firefox on PC
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Office 365
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Gmail app on Samsung J23 phone
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Email app on Samsung J23 phone
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In comparison, the ordinary Notes 10 MIME rendering is uniformly degraded across all mail 
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Copyright © 2019 Genii Software Ltd.

What has been said:


1103.1. Lars berntrop-Bos
(01/11/2019 01:17 AM)

My position has been for years and remains that IBM/HCL should integrate all this into the product, of course rewarding you handsomely for the excellent work.


1103.2. Ben Langhinrichs
(01/11/2019 08:21 AM)

Lars, I wouldn't disagree. Perhaps some people will suggest it at these Domino Jams that are going on.

In the meantime, I'll just keep selling it to people who don't have the patience to wait. Companies have been getting this sort of rendering from CoexLinks Fidelity since 2014, after all, though it does keep getting better.