So you think you know what a string’s “length” is now, big shot?

If Unicode has been starting to make sense, this’ll set you back a bit (sorry!).

What does the “max length” of a form field actually count?

The “maxlength” of a ˂textarea˃ element is the maximum number of — well, *somethings* — the end user can enter. What that something is may surprise you.

Use an established URL parser (I’ll say it again!)

It’s impossible to write a UTM parser without understanding how the wide world constructs (totally valid) URLs! The shorter the code, the more likely it misses tons of cases. So instead of some dude’s one- or two-liner, use a tested library.

A common form translation mistake, and how to avoid it using DOM Range

You can’t get away with setting textContent and innerHTML all the time. Sometimes you‘ve gotta bring the big stick: DOM Range.

You can’t HTML-encode {{my.tokens}} when they’re gonna appear in the Text part as-is

Another entry in the encoding-related guidebook to eliminate broken email links.

A less labor-intensive way to include emojis in the HTML part of Marketo emails

Updating my emoji techniques after a big break. Here’s a big improvement on the usual {{my.token}} method.

Detecting when people skip your preference center by using List-Unsubscribe

Mail clients that support the List-Unsubscribe header zap a hidden email back to Marketo, thus avoiding your preference center. Here’s how to detect that frustrating end-around.

When “technically valid” goes wrong: don’t put leading spaces in your Marketo hrefs, or you’ll lose click tracking

Leading and trailing spaces are totally valid in an HTML <a href> — they‘re automatically removed when the browser navigates to the final URL. But, standards notwithstanding, Marketo isn’t space-tolerant on the back end.