If you've ever made a custom email you'll know that there are significant limitations in you need to be aware of.
The most obvious limitations being:
- No support for Javascript in emails
- No support for internal CSS (CSS placed in the HTML file header). Its rather understandable that external CSS is still not supported.
- Email browsers encourage the use of HTML and CSS coding that is now considered deprecated and bad practice. For example; using
tables
to organise content rather thandivs
with CSS (float, etc.). Also as an example; the strict/over use of inline CSS - No support for
forms
Whilst its understandable that early browsers would not support Javascript or CSS. Why do these limitations persist in modern browsers? What are the technical purposes (if any) that modern email browsers still have these limitations and inconsistencies with web browsers?
To point out the most obvious reason Javascript was/is not supported: Security. But as Internet Explorer has shown; when dealing with the security issues around ActiveX (I think thats what it's called?) they didn't ban or remove Javascript completely - they took other actions to resolve the security problems. So why hasn't the same approach been taken with Email Browsers?