Let's Talk Email

From Coder to Advocate: Mark Robbins on the Future of Email Development and AI

In this episode of Let's Talk Email, Steven and Jay are joined by industry veteran Mark Robbins, the new Developer Advocate at Customer.io. Mark takes us behind the scenes of his career to Developer Advocate and shares his vision for the future of email development.  Key topics covered: * Advocating for Developers: What exactly is a Developer Advocate, and why does the email community need them? * AI & Components: Why AI is great at handling modular components but struggles with the "spaghetti code" of legacy email tables.

How Big is Too Big? The Definitive Guide to Email Image Optimization and Video in Email

In this episode of Let's Talk Email, Steven and Jay dive into the visual side of email development: Image Optimization and Video. We tackle the age-old debate of file size limits—how big is too big for a GIF? We also explore the frontier of video in the inbox, discussing everything from the "MP4-as-an-image" hack for Apple Mail to the enterprise-level solutions like Playable and EyeMail. Plus, we take a trip down memory lane to discuss the "dark arts" of pixel art and CSS-only gradients in tables. Key topics covered: * Baseline Best Practices: Why we aim for 100kb–200kb for statics and the 3MB sweet spot for GIFs. * The Tools of the Trade: How to get the most out of Photoshop's "Save for Web (Legacy)," EZGIF, and TinyPNG. * Video in Email Demystified: The server-side nightmare of hosting video and why a GIF with a play button is still the industry standard. * The "MP4 Hack": How to use the picture element to serve high-quality silent video to Apple users. * Accessibility & Motion: Managing "cognitive load" and why animating all 9 products in a grid is a bad idea. * Retro Email Dev: A look back at images and gradients made from tables for when images were blocked. Resources Mentioned: * EZGIF.com [https://ezgif.com/] * TinyPNG [https://tinypng.com/] * Playable [https://playable.video/] & EyeMail [https://eyemailinc.com/] * Remove.bg [https://www.remove.bg/]