Paula Briggs wrote:
> Hi can anyone help?
>
> AccessArt, is about to introduce a membership system to its so far
> free-to-access web site at www.accessart.org.uk
> <http://www.accessart.org.uk/>. Members will receive a quarterly
> newsletter via email and we are researching the best format for that
> newsletter, in terms of it reaching as many of its target users as is
> possible.
>
> Do Jiscmail members have any experience in terms of the preferred format
> of such newsletters. We’re thinking particularly of when newsletters get
> blocked via firewalls etc particularly when users receive them via
> institutions/large organisations etc. Do users have any problems with
> users not being able to view various newsletters you subscribe to?
> AccessArt is a highly visual website – and we would like our newsletters
> to be visual too, but are concerned that if we try to be too all singing
> and dancing then some users will not be able to access the content.
Hi Paula,
I may be missing something here, but is there any reason why the
actual newsletter needs to be emailed to your registered members? Why
not simply email them a simple reminder that a new issue has been
posted, including a URL at which it can be viewed? It is really quite
terrible practice to email large attachments to a large number of
users. Not only can this cause network problems, but there is also
the needless and real economic and ecological costs of very many users
then storing copies of your newsletter on their computers.
As to format, if it is being provided on the web, then XHTML is
probably the most appropriate format. If exact page placement of
images is important to you (but with additional problems of
accessibility) then PDF is reasonable.
(A more complicated option is to do it all in XML, perhaps TEI XML,
and then generate HTML or PDF versions from that. But I wouldn't
suggest this unless you happen to have the technical expertise
available to you.)
Hope that helps,
-James
--
Dr James Cummings, Oxford Text Archive/AHDS:LLL, University of Oxford
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