ctti-clinicaltrials / aact

Improving Public Access to Aggregate Content of ClinicalTrials.gov
http://aact.ctti-clinicaltrials.org
MIT License
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kostik/format-emails-research/AACT-207 #1068

Closed kostik700015 closed 1 year ago

kostik700015 commented 1 year ago

That ticket aims to provide research about the most suitable framework for formatting emails.

I reviewed 13 frameworks and several gems "inliners" for CSS styles for emails.

Frameworks reviewed: MJML Acorn Bojler Foundation HEML

Gems reviewed: roadie premailer-rails actionmailer_inlines_css inline_styles_mailer

The most popular framework for formatting emails for now (July 2023) is MJML. I found many tutorial links and videos around MJML, it is also free to use. I tried to find some tutorials that cover Foundation but even their official docs link is not working (last checked July 5, 1.43pm) https://foundation.zurb.com/docs The only 1 useful foundation gem-related video was found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA6KEtr5yVE&t=230s&ab_channel=RubyOnRailsTipsandSetups and 1 playlist about the foundation which is 6 years old, very few and old tutorials/articles like this one: https://www.vandelaydesign.com/ultimate-guide-foundation-for-emails/ (2016). (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR_ZJO3q73HalAe5sRs7ByjHvptmbflsL). Other related videos were also about 3-7 years old. Among email styling gems I would like to highlight "premailer-rails" gem - it is a long-lived project that still receives updates and has more than 64 million downloads so far.

In the study, I was guided by the following technology selection criteria:

  1. How long the technology has been in use - longer is better.
  2. Compatibility with Rails.
  3. Popularity, and prevalence among developers. For more popular technology, more educational materials have been published.
  4. Free. The links I used:
  5. https://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/rails-send-emails-with-style/ april 2021
  6. https://www.cookieshq.co.uk/posts/how-to-style-emails-with-rails-and-roadie about roadie
  7. https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/Inline_CSS_for_E-Mail email styling gem statistic data comparison
  8. https://medium.com/@austinpaley32/action-mailer-what-to-keep-in-mind-to-send-beautiful-emails-with-rails-aa7c7da3d8e1 about action mailer
  9. https://www.emailonacid.com/blog/article/email-development/best-email-frameworks/ - best responsive emails frameworks
  10. https://www.frontendplanet.com/best-email-frameworks/ 13 best responsive emails frameworks
  11. https://www.slant.co/topics/3443/~best-responsive-email-frameworks - best responsive emails frameworks
  12. http://docs.thememountain.com/acorn/contents/ - acorn
  13. https://bojler.slicejack.com/ - bojler
  14. https://heml.io/docs/getting-started/overview - HEML
  15. https://documentation.mjml.io/ - MJML
  16. https://github.com/foundation/foundation-rails - Foundation
  17. https://github.com/premailer/premailer - Premailer