Back in 2017, I was experimenting with something that was pretty fun for the CSS we had at the time — building icons without using images.
Using mainly CSS, :before, :after, borders, shadows and a bit of creativity, I managed to create a set of icons that didn't depend on external image files. The interesting part for email was simple: no images to load or block — the icons are always visible.
You can still see that old experiment here:
Fast forward to 2026
At my last job, I decided to apply some of that old knowledge to an email signature.
And then I met Classic Outlook again. :D
What looked like a simple signature quickly turned into dealing with Outlook's rendering limitations, different behaviour between email clients, px → pt conversions, table rendering and weird spacing issues.
A few survival tricks
Along the way I found a few useful tricks — one of my favourites being that line-height: 0.5pt can practically zero out a line in Classic Outlook, which solved one of the most annoying spacing problems I had.
Eventually, that little fight turned into a complete email signature generator: SimpleSignature
If you'd like to check out the source code or contribute, you can find the repository on GitHub
It's not trying to be the prettiest or the most complicated signature generator out there. It's simple, effective and built around what I learned from actually fighting with email clients.
It's completely free, there's no registration, and I don't store the data you enter. Feel free to use it!
If you find a bug, have an idea, or think something could work better, leave a comment here or send me an email. Feedback is more than welcome.
And if it saves you some time and you feel like supporting the work, there's a Buy Me a Coffee button. If you wish. :)
What's the worst email client rendering bug you've ever had to deal with? Do you still rely on table-based layouts, or have you found a cleaner workaround? Let me know in the comments!
Cheers,
Nikolay
