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Join the party: MJML just turned one
MJML turned one! We’ve been celebrating with the community throughout February, but for those who missed it, here is a recap of what happened.
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Back in the day, email coding was such a nightmare… And then, one year ago, MJML happened. What was simply a very cool tool designed for our own product became a huge success when we decided to offer it to the open-source community. We’re very proud of what MJML has achieved in only one year, so we decided to throw a month-long online party. We’ve been celebrating with the community throughout February, but for those who missed it, here is a recap of what happened.
Table of contents
A 2016 retrospective (or what an awesome year we all had)
An API to rule them all
Bow ties Accordions are cool
On the road again
MJML turned one and we can't stop celebrating
A 2016 retrospective (or what an awesome year we all had)
When we released MJML, we knew our product was addressing a real pain point., but nothing could have prepared us for this amazing growth. Adopted by the community at an incredible speed, MJML has been featured as a top trend on platforms such as Product Hunt and Github.
To give you some numbers, MJML has been forked 329 times and is heading over 5000 stars on Github. NPM downloads are also impressive, exceeding 80,000 as of today. And these figures are still growing.
The hype is real. MJML now even has its dedicated tutorial on Smashing Magazine, the reference website for web developers and designers, and some would say it’s in its way to become the new standard for email coding. ;)
This success is really due to the amazing people around here who have supported MJML since the beginning. To thank the MJML community, we created a dedicated retrospective page featuring all the major events that took place last year, giving top billing to each of the MJML contributors. And this is just our first present.
Want to learn more about it? Check out our MJML birthday post on Medium.
An API to rule them all
MJML itself is coded in JavaScript and relies on the power of React and Node.js. Until today, if you wanted to integrate MJML directly into your app, you had to run it on your own NodeJS server, and wrap your application logic around it. This wasn’t an overly complicated process, but, as usual, it’s always a matter of time and resources. The community was longing for something more straightforward, so we decided to create the MJML API. Our objective: to make the MJML engine free from any language or dependency. And what’s more agnostic than HTTP?
Let’s say you want to create your own drag and drop responsive email builder. You want to leverage the power of MJML (and we do encourage you to do so). All it takes to get responsive HTML is now a simple HTTP POST request to the MJML API. The data is shaped in a JSON representation, ready to be used by your application. Imagine the possibilities!
It’s not too late to test the MJML API, which is currently in public beta. Head over to https://mjml.io/api and click on the big orange button “Join the beta”. The MJML API's documentation could come in handy as you’re uncovering all of the new possibilities the MJML API can open up for you.
Want to get even more from MJML? Time to look at our third present. Learn more about integrating MJML in your app in this Medium post.
Bow ties Accordions are cool
2017 is clearly the year of interactivity in emails, and MJML is on its way to become the standard in what is already much more than a trend.
Accordions, Doctor, accordions. There's no mj-bowtie yet.
Indeed, even though email has been around for a while, it can still be very hard to get interaction tricks right, mostly because of the lack of standardization among email clients. Don’t fall into despair, though: MJML is here to fight by your side.
Last November, we released the very cool mj-carousel. You read it. A true interactive carousel. In an email. Yep.
Now, it’s a child’s play to display several images without lengthening your template, a feature that comes in handy when you have to present a product for instance. And because there’s never enough interactive components, allow us to introduce you to the mj-accordion.
Maybe not this one...
Because emails with a lot of content are generally a nightmare on mobile, mj-accordion comes in useful when you want to deliver a lot of information in a concise way. Content is stacked into tabs and users can expand them at will. If responsive styles are not supported (mostly on desktop clients), tabs are then unwrapped and your content is readable at once. Yep, you’re reading it right: adding a mj-accordion to your template is just a win-win situation.
Curious? Just try the mj-accordion live now.
On the road again
Last but not least, our fourth MJML present is, once again, more than a simple gift. Because online celebrating is cool, but nothing will replace human contact, the MJML team has decided to travel all around the world to meet the MJML community in the flesh.
Four events are planned in four different cities, Paris, New York, London and Berlin. The MJML team will organize meetups and conferences, with key speakers from within the email community. A lot of surprises await, so, if you don’t want to miss a thing, stay tuned by joining the MJML slack and following MJML twitter account.
Meanwhile, be sure to have a look at MJML’s ambitious roadmap for 2017. And, with MJML 4 coming soon as a full rewrite to improve performances and ease of use, the story’s still to be written.
MJML is going on tour! If you want to learn more about our global events, check out our post on Medium.
Any wishes for the future of MJML? Let’s continue the party on Twitter using the hashtag #MJMLBirthday.
