Images in HTML Email Signature

[Westyfield2]

Hi guys,

I'm setting up emails from my website, and I'm using MS Outlook 2007 as the mail client. I haven't got an Exchange server or anything, I'm just pointing it at my hosts POP/IMAP/SMTP servers.

I've made a nice signature and opened it with IE, selected it all and copied/pasted it into Outlook (I couldn't find a way of Outlook having a HTML code view). The included image is referenced off of my hard drive, not off of my website.

Sending myself a test email to my GMail, I can see the nice pretty signature layout. However the images (logos) I've included aren't visible until I click the "Display images below" button. Then it all appears complete fine.
However scrolling to the bottom of the email reveals that there are two attachments (my two logos), and they've been renamed to image001.jpg & image002.jpg (on my hard drive and in the HTML I wrote they have proper meaningful names). When in GMail inbox view it does not show the paperclip attachment symbol next to the email, so it obviously can tell that they're images included in the mail not an attached file.

Now I tried changing the HTML so that it references the images off of my website, and this obviously stops them being attached but it still only works once the "Display images below" button is pressed as its referring to an external website.

Why does it bother me?

At work we use Outlook and I sent myself a mail to my GMail as a test. I do not get asked to "Display images below", and the logos are not shown at the bottom of the mail as being attachments. They appear in the signature in the correct positions.


Well how on earth are work managing it? I had a very quick look at the 'show original' of the mail I sent myself from work and it looks like the images are in .gif format and theres 60/70 lines of data (Hex?) that's described as "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64".

Any clues on how I can do this appreciated!

 

[gord]

"Display images below" sounds like a program setting in Outlook. Or it could be third party security software scanning the emails and removing anything it doesnt like.. AVG, Avast all have mail scanners..

Hotmail has "mark as safe" before it shows images.

Gmail should have some filter, but it obviously knows your email is safe and is just displaying images straight up.

 

[Westyfield2]

"Display images below" sounds like a program setting in Outlook. Or it could be third party security software scanning the emails and removing anything it doesnt like.. AVG, Avast all have mail scanners..

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

In GMail webmail, I get "Display images below" every time with my new outlook signature (and OcUK mailshots etc etc). When I've embedded the images it also shows as an attachment. When I've referenced it off of my website I only get "Display images below", no attachment. If I've sent a mail to my GMail from my work outlook I don't get any "Display images below" or attachments, just the images in the sig.

 

[gord]

Ah, right. Tell me if I've still got the wrong stick end.

Well, having them referenced from the web is the best way as you avoid attachments as you are seeing.

As for sending from your work Outlook and not getting the message, it just sounds like your work email is trusted in your Gmail account.

If the email is the same and you are just sending from two different locations then I would say that Gmail thinks your host isnt too trustworthy and its not letting you see the images straight away.

 

[Westyfield2]

Ah, right. Tell me if I've still got the wrong stick end.

Well, having them referenced from the web is the best way as you avoid attachments as you are seeing.

As for sending from your work Outlook and not getting the message, it just sounds like your work email is trusted in your Gmail account.

If the email is the same and you are just sending from two different locations then I would say that Gmail thinks your host isnt too trustworthy and its not letting you see the images straight away.

Thanks.

The email is not the same, I'm just using the fact that I know it's somehow possible as I've seen it at work - I don't have a clue how the work one works, just that I run a app and type in my name, job title, extension number and it adds it to our standard signature.

I had a bit of a look at the work one, and by creating a new (blank) email and saving it as a HTML file.... it appears that it's getting the logos off of one of our internal fileservers (not referencing it off our website) as a .gif file and then embeding it somehow in the email, without attaching it. So surely if they were doing it how I tried it'd be showing as an attachment even if their domain is recognised as legit and therefore not giving the "Display images below" warning.

I'd assume they're doing it somehow through the 60/70 lines of letters/numbers in Base64 that's somehow embedding the data of the picture file and then tells the receiving client to show it as an image. But how this works .

 

[simisker]

Simply put: if you want 100% consistency across mail clients, you can't use images.

Your work's Outlook is handling them as you want because of any/all of the following: they're using an Exchange server with appropriate trusted sender configuration; Outlook sends it's own 'proprietary' HTML [It uses the MS Word HTML engine]; your Outlook client has its own local trusted senders list...

There's no way of doing this across the board without at least having some sort of 'display images?' interaction from the recipient.

As ever, images in HTML emails should be considered a decorative luxury.

As gord's already said, it's better to link than embed; consider the bloat from all the embedded sig images in a protracted back-and-forth conversation. They soon add up. As you have discovered, linking has its own drawbacks, these too have no guaranteed workarounds.

If you must use images in your sig, keep it for the logo only. Use inline styling to bring the contact info in your sig as close to your company's branding as possible.

Don't put any important info in an image, for important accessibility reasons [and by extension, to protect the company from any possible legal action for not having accessible contact info].

Hope that helps, though I suspect it doesn't

 

[simisker]

Simply put: if you want 100% consistency across mail clients, you can't use images.

Your work's Outlook is handling them as you want because of any/all of the following: they're using an Exchange server with appropriate trusted sender configuration; Outlook sends it's own 'proprietary' HTML [It uses the MS Word HTML engine]; your Outlook client has its own local trusted senders list...

There's no way of doing this across the board without at least having some sort of 'display images?' interaction from the recipient.

As ever, images in HTML emails should be considered a decorative luxury.

As gord's already said, it's better to link than embed; consider the bloat from all the embedded sig images in a protracted back-and-forth conversation. They soon add up. As you have discovered, linking has its own drawbacks, these too have no guaranteed workarounds.

If you must use images in your sig, keep it for the logo only. Use inline styling to bring the contact info in your sig as close to your company's branding as possible.

Don't put any important info in an image, for important accessibility reasons [and by extension, to protect the company from any possible legal action for not having accessible contact info].