[Ti] [OT] HTML/MIME emails

Wed Feb 12 01:34:23 PST 2003

Good morning Powerbook users,

I have an off topic question that has been flummoxing me for the last 
few weeks, so I thought I'd throw this one at you.

I was asked to produce an "HTML email template" that would essentially 
allow users to send email from MS outlook on PC's and Entourage running 
on OS9/OSX (to the internet) with an HTML header containing the new 
company logo.

Not being at all an expert on email, especially not MIME email, I 
looked at what they wanted, and decided it could be best achieved with 
a style attribute to the <body> tag thus:

<body style="background-attachment: fixed; background-image:  
url(england.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 
right top" bgcolor = "#FFFFFF" text="#000000" background="england.jpg" 
bgproperties=fixed>

I then learnt about Outlook "stationery" and imported this HTML (with 
jpeg image) into outlook to achieve what i needed, a logo in the top 
right hand corner of the email.

When i sent this email to other Outlook users working on PCs it 
displays with no errors, but send it to any Mac based Mail User Agent 
and the image gets thrown at the bottom of the email as an attachment.

I am pretty sure the Mac MUAs are falling over with regard to the MIME 
data being sent in the email, as I have seen a similar problem with 
MIME and Mail.app a while ago.

Does anyone have a fix for this? or an alternative strategy to get the 
results I need? A MIME knowledgeable friend suggested that the problem 
may lie in using the CSS "style" tag, or perhaps the url() form of 
embedding the image.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated, as this issue is slowly driving 
me insane...

--
Tarik Bilgin
Opalblue
tarik at opalblue.com

PS My Apple wishlist:
1. iTunes 4 with Support for Vogg Orbis and Rendezvous
2. A 40gig iPod
3. An updated 15 inch TiBook :)