The composer

The composer is one page per issue: the subject and preheader at the top, an intro you can write in markdown, your links grouped under sections below that, and the publish panel down the right. Issue Mint saves the top of it as you type, so there is no save button to find.

Nothing has to be set up before any of this works. Sending is included from the day you sign up, so a new account’s first issue can be written and sent in one sitting.

The subject and the preheader

The subject is the only field an issue cannot go out without, and it is most of what a reader has to go on. Issue Mint accepts up to 250 characters in it, which is far more than an inbox will show.

The preheader is the line that appears after the subject in an inbox list. Issue Mint puts it into the email as hidden preview text, and uses it again as the description of that issue’s page on the website every newsletter gets. The counter under the field turns amber past 140 characters, because that is roughly where mail clients stop showing it, though the field itself takes 200.

The intro, and the markdown toolbar

The intro sits above your links and is written in markdown, with four buttons over it: bold, italic, link and list. The first three wrap whatever you have selected. List works on whole lines rather than on the selection, so highlighting a paragraph and pressing it bullets every line of that paragraph, and pressing it again takes the bullets off.

Markdown here is the ordinary set: emphasis, links, lists, quotes, headings and tables. Raw HTML is escaped rather than rendered, on this field and on every other field a reader eventually sees. A link written into your intro is tracked like any other link, and it keeps its destination in the plain text part of the email, where a stripped link would leave a phrase with nothing to follow. The field holds up to 20,000 characters.

What autosaves, and what does not

The subject, the preheader and the intro autosave about a second after your last keystroke, and the indicator beside the heading says which of those two states it is in. Clicking a link mid-sentence does not cost you the sentence: whatever the debounce still owed is sent on the way out. Closing the tab outright is the one case not covered, so give it a second before you do that.

Two things save on their own terms instead. A link’s title and comment save when you press Save link on the link, which is described on adding a link, and a sponsored banner’s artwork uploads the moment you choose the file, which is described on sponsored items.

Which issues can still be edited

A draft and a scheduled issue are editable. Nothing else is, and the composer opens read-only with a line at the top saying so.

An issue waiting for review is frozen deliberately, because whoever releases a held first send is approving the issue in front of them, and an owner who could edit afterwards could have one thing reviewed and another thing sent. An issue that is sending or sent is frozen because part of the list already has it. An issue that failed is frozen too: a send that stopped part way through leaves the issue failed with the reason on it, and editing it would not finish the send. In every one of those cases, Duplicate gives you an editable copy. Every status and what it means is listed in the reference.

Anything that went wrong appears at the top

A banner above the composer carries the last thing that went wrong with this issue, written to you rather than to us. Three things write it: a scheduled issue that met a blocker at its send time and was parked back to draft, a send that was stopped part way, and a note when more than 5 per cent of the addresses on a send failed, which also names the reason the mail provider gave most often. The same banner appears against that issue in the issues list, because a parked issue becomes a draft among other drafts and the list is where somebody notices it.

The library, without leaving the composer

The Library button in the header carries a count of everything waiting, and opens a panel over the composer with up to fifty items in it, newest first. Reader submissions from your website and links saved with the Chrome extension both land there, and the library is the page about filling it. Choose which section to insert into, press Insert, and the item is marked used so it leaves the inbox rather than being offered to you again next week.

Duplicating an issue

Duplicate creates a new draft that takes the next issue number, with the subject prefixed by “Copy of”. It keeps the preheader and the intro, and copies every link with its section, its order, its comment, its sponsored flag and its banner artwork. What it does not copy is the tie to a sponsorship booking, because a booking belongs to one issue and one date. Issue numbers are never reused, so the copy is a new number rather than a second version of the old one.