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Email Marketing, Business & Monkeys

Gmail Breaking Cellpadding

November 19th, 2007 | by Ben

Looks like Gmail recently made some changes to their interface, and it’s stripping out table cellpadding and cellspacing in HTML emails. Ouch.

There’s a teeny-tiny link at the top of gmail that lets users switch between "old version" and "new version". In the "old version" things work and look fine:

Gmailoldversion

It appears as though using inline-css to define your cellpadding helps. Note that some people in the intertubes are complaining that some inline-css is breaking in gmail too (like line-height).

Since Google is technically a "beta" product, and since it’s free, and since they only just recently made these changes, we can’t complain too much or react too soon.

I have faith in almighty Google. They will fix this. If they don’t do it soon, I have even more faith in "The Chad" (our new programmer). He will modify our templates if we have to. But give it a little time. This kinda stuff happens all the time. Even Lotus Notes fixed most of their HTML email issues (eventually).

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8 Comments

    • Scott Wilson says:

      Here in Florida, we’re normally suspicious of chad … but I’m sure your Chad will fix this! :)

    • Kevin says:

      I’m experiencing this with Gmail presently. Has there been an update or a fix by this “Chad” of which you speak?

    • Ben says:

      Heh. The Chad has been occupied with bigger projects, but “Le Mark” has fixed it, and it’s currently in testing. He plans to roll it out on Monday the 18th. The templates will use inline CSS to add padding, but will fail gracefully to traditional cellpadding for email readers that don’t support inline CSS (or for when Gmail switches things around on us again).

    • Sean says:

      This is a great reference. Thanks for citing some of the known problems with this bug. And even reporting the bug for that matter.

      I was trying to optimize my latest template for gmail and ran into line-height and padding as issues within my working files.

      Keep up the good bloggin. It’s nice to know there are others out there helping us besides CampaignMonitor.

      thx!

      //sean

    • Ben says:

      Sure thing. Good God your website has got some cool flash stuff going on there.

    • jmp909 says:

      my solution was to add padding style to each cell

    • Harry says:

      You posted this on: November 19th, 2007. Its now July 6th 2009 and Google hasn’t fixed the problem. :S

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