# Responsive HTML mail signatures
### Let's punch email clients in the stomach!
Responsive templates for mail signatures.
When you need some basic signatures that work on mobile.
...and your colleagues need them too.
...but you don't want to deal with tables and inline styles.
## Preview
Here's how the samples look:
## Motivation
Let's make writing HTML emails & email signatures easier. We won't fix all email clients, but we can surely make the process of satisfying them a tad nicer.
See a fairly comprehensive rant on the subject (and not only) [in this article](http://fadeit.dk/blog/post/html-emails-and-email-signatures-how-hard-can-it-be).
## What does it do
- [x] config-based template generation
- [x] allows generating multiple templates (for your colleagues too!)
- [x] transforms linked (``) CSS into inline styles
- [x] embeds local `img[src]` into the template (base64).*
- [x] minifies the template
- [x] media queries for mail clients that support them
- [x] can build templates from multiple sources
- [x] watches HTML/CSS files for changes and re-builds
**Some mail clients don't support them, so an external URL might be a good idea.*
## Getting started
```
$ npm install
$ gulp
```
Take a look at `src/fadeit/` for an example. Copy / Paste, rename it and change `src/fadeit/conf.js` to suite your needs. Run `gulp` to build the templates (into `/dist`). The gulp task will watch HTML & CSS files by default.
## Overview
This diagram shows what happens to your templates.
## CSS Support
Remember, it's HTML mails, so you need to check a big-ass table to find out nothing's gonna work.
See [this](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/). To convert CSS files to inline styles [gulp-inline-css](https://www.npmjs.com/package/gulp-inline-css) is being used.
## TODO
- [x] closing `inline-css` issue [#8](https://github.com/jonkemp/inline-css/issues/8#issuecomment-149025428) would greatly improve this repo
- [ ] preprocessor support (simplifies BEM)
- [ ] use github pages to show live demos
- [ ] check [gulp-inline-css](https://github.com/jonkemp/inline-css) for new features
## Usage with different e-mail clients
### Thunderbird
There are several Thunderbird plugins which can automatically insert signatures when composing e-mails. We recommend [SmartTemplate4](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/smarttemplate4) as one of the options. It can use different templates for new e-mails, replies and forwarded e-mails.
### Apple Mail / OS X (oh boy)
#### Solution 1
- Open Mail.app and go to `Mail` -> `Preferences` -> `Signatures`
- Create a new signature and write some placeholder text (doesn't matter what it is, but you have to identify it later).
- Close Mail.app.
- Open terminal, then open the signature files using TextEdit (might be different for iCloud drive check the article below).
```
$ open -a TextEdit ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/V3/MailData/Signatures/ubiquitous_*.mailsignature
```
- Keep the file with the placeholder open, close the other ones.
- Replace the `...` and it's contents with the template of your choice. *Don't remove the meta information at the top!*
- Open Mail.app and compose a new mail. Select the signature from the list to test it out.
**NB**: Images won't appear in the signature preview, but will work fine when you compose a message.
####Solution 2
You can also open the HTML files in `/dist` in a browser, CMD + A, CMD + C and then paste into the signature box. This won't copy the `` part or the `