From the CSS Designer panel, enter Current mode.Choose the page element you want to style in the Live view document window if you prefer, you can go the Tag Selector or DOM panel route.If an inline style is already applied (one key advantage for customizing a Dreamweaver email starter template, where many are), you can easily adjust it through the CSS Designer panel. That’s not to say that you can’t use embedded styles during your development process I’ll show an easy way to get the best of both worlds.ĭreamweaver offers a number of tools for handling inline styles. It’s vital that all declarations include an !important keyword to override the corresponding inline CSS-because, as we’ll see in the next section, most CSS is inline for HTML emails.Īs mentioned, inline CSS is pretty much the mandatory method for styling HTML emails. Now, you can use CSS Designer and all the other built-in Dreamweaver tools to create your media query specific CSS rules.
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Embed the code within the page by either choosing an existing.In the pop-up, choose max-width as the parameter with the desired value to set the media query code.
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And, as you probably well know, Dreamweaver CC offers full media query support as well, from development to depiction. But, surprise, surprise! Numerous email clients now support media queries, at the very heart of responsive design.
A recent post by Karol K on effective HTML newsletter design summarized these challenges. One of the first things you’ll learn when developing an HTML email is that you have to go back to the stone age for your email to display properly across the board: table-based layouts, no external CSS, no JavaScript or PHP. As a testament to their worth, I used the Responsive email starter template as the basis for the example HTML email shown throughout this post. I’ll point out some of the more useful snippets as we go. Not only are these very solid initial designs that will work for many email layouts, they are just chockfull of helpful email-specific coding, all lovingly commented. Responsive – Similar to the Hybrid layout, but incorporating a media query for devices with a maximum width of 600px.Layout includes 2 and 3 column areas as well as float left and float right. Hybrid – Offers the widest initial display with a single media query for screens with a maximum width of 480px.Multiple columns persist on devices with narrower widths. Fluid – Similar to Basic, except no media queries are used although percentages are applied.Basic – Layout includes single and two column design, with media queries for both devices with a width of 600 and 480 pixels, coded so that multiple columns are linearized.Use the starter template that best suits your design needs: From the Sample Folder column, choose Email Templates.Choose File > New to open the New Document dialog.To access these wonderful jumping-off points, follow these steps: To simplify all our lives, Dreamweaver CC includes four really great HTML email templates as starting points, all easy to adapt and customize. With the wide variety of email programs-many stemming from the earliest days of the Internet-the technology applied is pretty much a hot mess and very troublesome for today’s web designers to get their collective heads around. If I had to pick one word to describe the entire HTML email ecosystem, it would be arcane. Jumpstart with Dreamweaver CC’s Email Starter Templates The state of HTML emails today demands exactly such a wide-spread grasp and implementation of the languages and protocols that Dreamweaver offers. Why is this venerable web development tool the number one choice for designing HTML emails? It’s precisely because Dreamweaver has been around so long and mastered Web technology at every stage: from the early days of table-based layouts to the modern, responsive era with media queries. And not by a little: Dreamweaver was preferred by greater than twice as the nearest competitor. A recent industry study named Dreamweaver CC the overwhelming favorite HTML editor for designing and developing HTML emails.