Sending html email having JQuery scripts

Question

I'm using PHP to send html emails. I've tried to import css files inside the email, and it works fine.

<link href="http://www.mywebsite.com/css/mail_styles.css" 
      type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />

But i want the email to look stylish with some JQuery tricks, so i tried to import the JQuery library inside the email to add some scripts, but even gmail couldn't read the library.

<script type="text/javascript" 
        src="http://www.mywebsite.com/scripts/jquery.js"></script>

So is there a way to import JavaScript libraries inside html emails ?

Thanks ...

Answer 1

Most email clients either disable email JavaScript entirely, or only allow a subset of it, due to security reasons. Web-based clients such as Gmail are likely to fall into the former category.

You can try embedding the script file itself directly into the email, but overall using JS in emails is a bad idea that's best avoided.

edit

Remember, email is a static content-delivery mechanism. As another commentator noted, if you want to send someone dynamic content, email them a link to your DHTML webpage.

Answer 2

@Karim79, I'm not convinced that the answer is so clear cut as you suggest.

It all depends on the environment used to read the email, and whether that environemnt supports javascript or not. Admittedly, I suspect that most email readers would be averse to supporting javascript, in order to avoid viruses and malware, but there is no absolute reason why this couldn't be done.

Having said that, the unpredictable level of support offered by readers would probably mean that you shouldn't rely on the script running correctly (if at all), so you'd probably want to take a 'graceful degradation' approach.