Howdy everyone, the first alpha release of the tenth major version of Dada Mail has been... released!

This version focuses specifically on shipping with beautiful HTML email messages for (almost) all the transactional emails Dada Mail sends out, as well as making it much easier for you to create good looking mass mailing email messages.

• Download and install:
  http://dadamailproject.com/support/documentation-10_0_0-alpha1/install_dada_mail.pod.html
• Changelog v10
  http://dadamailproject.com/support/documentation-10_0_0-alpha1/changes_10_x.pod.html
• Differences between v9 and v10
  http://dadamailproject.com/support/documentation-10_0_0-alpha1/dada9_to_dada10.pod.html

Please try it out! I'd love to hear people's feedback. The changelog and v9-v10 differences are also below:

10.0.0 Alpha 1

Features

Enhanced Email Messages

Powered by Foundation for Emails

Foundation for Emails (http://foundation.zurb.com/emails.html) is a framework to develop HTML email messages that, "Sucks Less": they're beautiful, resposive, and look correctly in most HTML-capable email readers - even Outlook.

Work with these HTML emails via SASS Workflow documented here:

https://foundation.zurb.com/emails/docs/sass-guide.html

Dada Mail's quiver of HTML email templates has been turned into its own Github project at,

https://github.com/justingit/dada_mail_foundation_email_templates

which you may use as a starter for your own customized email templates for Dada Mail.

(TODO:

Create documention on how to do that!

Email Themes

Dada Mail now has support for, Email Themes: collections of email templates that you can use to customize the look and feel of your email messages.

TODO:

Currently, Dada Mail only comes with one email theme, but should support additional themes in the future, with the idea that people can create and share their own themes.

Mass Mailing Email Layouts

Email Themes include the ability to choose a specific layout for your mass mailing to be wrapped up in.

Currently, the following layout options are available:

• Full Layout

• Minimal Layout

• For Discussion List Messages

• Don't use a Layout

Mass Mailing Preview

Without needing to send a test message out, you can now preview how your mass mailing will look, right in the Send a Message screen. This makes it easy to try different layouts and other options out, before comitting to sending to your entire mailing list.

Set an image and social network links in messages

The newly improved HTML email messages also support showing a logo, and list social media likns - these all can be set under Mailing List - List Information

Dada Mail 9 to Dada Mail 10 Upgrade Guide

This guide was compiled to get you ready for upgrade to Dada Mail v10.

Focus

We've worked primarily on getting our email messages sent by Dada Mail to use really beautiful and awesome HTML produced by the Foundation for Emails Framework, as well as the plaintext fallback.

You can learn more about Foudnation for Emails, here:

http://foundation.zurb.com/emails.html

In past versions of Dada Mail, ALL transctional email messages had a plaintext-only "option" available. The HTML emails look so much better, and probably rank much higher on usability. We're excited!

To support Foundation for Emails, we've had to make considerable changes to the internal code of Dada Mail. A new dependency is now required to run Dada Mail: the Perl CPAN module, LWP.

The following CPAN Perl Modules aren't required, but definitely recommended to have the best experience when running Dada Mail:

• CSS::Inliner

• HTML::Parser

• HTML::Packer

• CSS::Packer

Because the workflow to create the new HTML emails is based on Foundation for Emails SASS workflow (https://foundation.zurb.com/emails/docs/sass-guide.html), which is done offline (via your desktop/laptop/etc), we've removed the ability to edit these messages from within Dada Mail through the Apperance - Email Message Templates screen. The HTML produced by the framework is exceptionally complex - they just cannot be easily edited by hand. Using the SASS workflow is actally pretty approachable by a competent web designer or developer.

We will try to create instructions on how to fetch a starter collection of email message templates, so you may create your own customized email themes.

--

Justin J: Lead Dadaist.
url:         http://dadamailproject.com
email:    justin@PROTECTED
twitter:  @dadamail
skype:   leaddadaist

Dada Mail Announcements:
http://dadamailproject.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/list/dada_announce/