Standardisation is common occurrence - we have the W3C handling it for most of out web needs, but a few weeks ago a group started up a project that aims to standardise the way emails are handled in terms of both HTML and Plain Text.
Getting even a relatively simple design to work in the 10 or 12 major email clients can be a very frustrating task, and support is getting worse, not better. It's time for web designers and email client developers to realise that we need to follow the path that web standards for browsers has cut so clearly.
I totally agree with them, I know it's not as important as your website if you are a business as usually it will be your website that provides more information and will be their first port of call; but nevertheless having your business (or personal site) also sending proper cross-platform HTML email is always a good thing. They have also been compiling a list of email clients and their status according to their own developed acid test. In this league, the poorest state of the clients goes to Outlook 2007, GMail and Apple .Mac.
Link: Email Standards Project
