I've been writing some basic HTML to use as templates for email messages.
The code uses only some inline CSS styling and simple HTML.
The page displays fine in Opera 9 and IE7 but when I send it to myself
to check, the OE flashes the HTML rendering for about 1/2 second
and then displays only the text portion of the page without any
styling or formatting at all.

I created the message from New Message Using = Web page.
My first simplest examples displayed OK.
I've never done this before, so I don't know how to format or code
a page specifically for email. I tried removing the doctype statement
and then later the entire head section leaving just:
html
body
!-- content: p, table, etc. --
/body
/html

I don't know if something is configured wrong in OE or if I'm doing
something wrong with the composition or sending.

Can someone give me some help with this?
I'm kind of lost at this point.

Thanks,
mjc

What program are you using to generate the code?
Post some of the code that is causing a problem.
--
Ronald Sommer

"michaeljnc" wrote in message
.. .
: I've been writing some basic HTML to use as templates for email messages.
: The code uses only some inline CSS styling and simple HTML.
: The page displays fine in Opera 9 and IE7 but when I send it to myself
: to check, the OE flashes the HTML rendering for about 1/2 second
: and then displays only the text portion of the page without any
: styling or formatting at all.
:
: I created the message from New Message Using = Web page.
: My first simplest examples displayed OK.
: I've never done this before, so I don't know how to format or code
: a page specifically for email. I tried removing the doctype statement
: and then later the entire head section leaving just:
: html
: body
: !-- content: p, table, etc. --
: /body
: /html
:
: I don't know if something is configured wrong in OE or if I'm doing
: something wrong with the composition or sending.
:
: Can someone give me some help with this?
: I'm kind of lost at this point.
:
: Thanks,
: mjc
:
:

Ron Sommer wrote:
What program are you using to generate the code?
Post some of the code that is causing a problem.

I'm using PSPad. You're probably familiar with it - a free HTML/Text editor.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

html
!-- ================================ BODY ================================ --
body style="margin:.3em .3em; background: #ffe6cc; font: 12pt Verdana, Arial, sans-serif;"
p style="margin:0 0; background-color:#66aaaa; padding:5px 0 1px 0; text-align:center;
border:none; font:normal bold 1em/.9em 'Courier New';"
Message from Michael br /
span style="font: small-caps .65em Arial;"HTML FORMAT/span
/p
p style="width:60%; margin-left:20%; text-align:left"
message text here
/p

!-- the outer table is used to Center the inner table --
!-- ..the only guaranteed method, since div styles may be ignored/removed--
table width="100%" border="0"trtd align="center"

table style="font:.9em sans-serif; width:480px; margin-bottom:0;" rules="all" border="1" bgcolor="#ccb399" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="10"
!-- caption align="bottom"table caption/caption --
col /
col width="65px" /

trtd style="font: 1.2em bold sans-serif;" colspan="2" align="center" bgcolor="#9999ff"T I T L E/td/tr
tr
td align="left"text/td
td align="right"$$$.$$/td
/tr
tr
td align="left"text/td
td align="right"xx.xx/td
/tr
tr
td align="left"text/td
td align="right"xx.xx/td
/tr
tr
td align="left"text/td
td align="right"xx.xx/td
/tr
/table

/td/tr/table

p style="width:60%; margin-left:20%; text-align:left"
stay well.
/p
/body
/html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Michael,

FWIW, the code worked for me, although it seems only a rough beginning.
If you haven't already, choose the view source option from a Rich Text
(HTML) message toolbar. This will allow viewing the source code and as
well as a preview of the message without actually sending it. I don't
know why the received message is switching to plain text. Is OE set to
receive messages in plain text, or is some 3rd-party filtering in place?

How are you applying the HTML to the message?
From the Insert menu choose Text from File
Choose All Files and select your *.HTML file

--
Tim K.
aka Kuay Tim
MS-MVP - Outlook Express
Lynnwood, WA
*
"michaeljnc" wrote in message
...
Ron Sommer wrote:
What program are you using to generate the code?
Post some of the code that is causing a problem.

I'm using PSPad. You're probably familiar with it - a free HTML/Text
editor.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

html
!-- ================================ BODY
================================ --
body style="margin:.3em .3em; background: #ffe6cc; font: 12pt Verdana,
Arial, sans-serif;"
p style="margin:0 0; background-color:#66aaaa; padding:5px 0 1px 0;
text-align:center;
border:none; font:normal bold 1em/.9em 'Courier New';"
Message from Michael br /
span style="font: small-caps .65em Arial;"HTML FORMAT/span
/p
p style="width:60%; margin-left:20%; text-align:left"
message text here
/p

!-- the outer table is used to Center the inner table --
!-- ..the only guaranteed method, since div styles may be
ignored/removed--
table width="100%" border="0"trtd align="center"

table style="font:.9em sans-serif; width:480px; margin-bottom:0;"
rules="all" border="1" bgcolor="#ccb399" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="10"
!-- caption align="bottom"table caption/caption --
col /
col width="65px" /

trtd style="font: 1.2em bold sans-serif;" colspan="2"
align="center" bgcolor="#9999ff"T I T L E/td/tr
tr
td align="left"text/td
td align="right"$$$.$$/td
/tr
tr
td align="left"text/td
td align="right"xx.xx/td
/tr
tr
td align="left"text/td
td align="right"xx.xx/td
/tr
tr
td align="left"text/td
td align="right"xx.xx/td
/tr
/table

/td/tr/table

p style="width:60%; margin-left:20%; text-align:left"
stay well.
/p
/body
/html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kuay Tim wrote:

How are you applying the HTML to the message?
From the Insert menu choose Text from File
Choose All Files and select your *.HTML file

I just tried the Insert Text from file and that worked. The file is viewable,
but some of the formatting was messed up. I've already fixed some of that -
it was a style syntax error.

Looks like I was just using the wrong method of getting the HTML into
the message.

Thanks, Kuay.
I think that's what I needed.

Michael

You're welcome, Michael. Hope your message turns out well.

--
Tim K.
aka Kuay Tim
MS-MVP - Outlook Express
Lynnwood, WA
*
"michaeljnc" wrote in message
...
Kuay Tim wrote:

How are you applying the HTML to the message?
From the Insert menu choose Text from File
Choose All Files and select your *.HTML file

I just tried the Insert Text from file and that worked. The file is
viewable,
but some of the formatting was messed up. I've already fixed some of
that -
it was a style syntax error.

Looks like I was just using the wrong method of getting the HTML into
the message.

Thanks, Kuay.
I think that's what I needed.

Michael

Start here http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/default.aspx and here
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/aa740476.aspx

--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-Windows (IE, OE, Security, Shell/User)
AumHa VSOP & Admin; DTS-L.org

michaeljnc wrote:
I've been writing some basic HTML to use as templates for email messages.
The code uses only some inline CSS styling and simple HTML.
The page displays fine in Opera 9 and IE7 but when I send it to myself
to check, the OE flashes the HTML rendering for about 1/2 second
and then displays only the text portion of the page without any
styling or formatting at all.

I created the message from New Message Using = Web page.
My first simplest examples displayed OK.
I've never done this before, so I don't know how to format or code
a page specifically for email. I tried removing the doctype statement
and then later the entire head section leaving just:
html
body
!-- content: p, table, etc. --
/body
/html

I don't know if something is configured wrong in OE or if I'm doing
something wrong with the composition or sending.

Can someone give me some help with this?
I'm kind of lost at this point.

Thanks,
mjc

"michaeljnc" wrote in message
.. .
I've been writing some basic HTML to use as templates for email messages.
The code uses only some inline CSS styling and simple HTML.
The page displays fine in Opera 9 and IE7 but when I send it to myself
to check, the OE flashes the HTML rendering for about 1/2 second
and then displays only the text portion of the page without any
styling or formatting at all.


Use Ctrl-F3. Is there a Content-Type: Text/Plain portion in the source?
Perhaps that is what is being rendered by OE?
In that case does View, Message in HTML (Alt-Shift-H) do anything for you?

An OE Stationery group would probably be more familiar with this symptom
than here. Unfortunately the most active one is not hosted on this server.


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---




I created the message from New Message Using = Web page.
My first simplest examples displayed OK.
I've never done this before, so I don't know how to format or code
a page specifically for email. I tried removing the doctype statement
and then later the entire head section leaving just:
html
body
!-- content: p, table, etc. --
/body
/html

I don't know if something is configured wrong in OE or if I'm doing
something wrong with the composition or sending.

Can someone give me some help with this?
I'm kind of lost at this point.

Thanks,
mjc

Robert Aldwinckle wrote:

Use Ctrl-F3. Is there a Content-Type: Text/Plain portion in the source?
Perhaps that is what is being rendered by OE?
In that case does View, Message in HTML (Alt-Shift-H) do anything for you?

An OE Stationery group would probably be more familiar with this symptom
than here. Unfortunately the most active one is not hosted on this server.


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---


Here is the original Doctype statement and the head section:
================================================== ============
!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"

html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
head
titleemail from Michael/title
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /
meta name="keywords" content="search keywords go here" /
style type="text/css"
/style
/head

I actually began removing stuff to see if that would help.
First I took out the doctype. Then I simplified the opening
html tag. Finally, I removed the entire head section, but that
was not the problem.

Also, I have to say that I know it's not very pretty code.
Normally, I would have put most of that inside the style tag
within the head, but I had just read a couple of articles about how
some email clients/readers will strip out or ignore the CSS unless
it's put in inline styles. So that's why it looks so 'busy'.
That's not how I've been learning to do it!

Here are two of the articles I looked at:

'How to Create Great HTML emails with CSS'
check out the do's and don't's at the end of the article.

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/cs...le.php/3679231

'HTML EMAILS - TAMING THE BEAST'

http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/html-emails

Also, this one about OE6 disabling HTML viewing for security
reasons, and how to turn it back ON again.

http://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/Outloo...e_Display.html


Robert Aldwinckle wrote:
In that case does View, Message in HTML (Alt-Shift-H) do anything for you?

An OE Stationery group would probably be more familiar with this symptom
than here. Unfortunately the most active one is not hosted on

The menu selection:
View = Message in HTML (Alt+Shift+H)
IS DIMMED OUT!!! I can't select it; it has been disabled.
That must be a clue as to what is happening, but I don't know
how to reverse it??

Thanks,
Michael

"michaeljnc" wrote in message
...
Robert Aldwinckle wrote:

Use Ctrl-F3. Is there a Content-Type: Text/Plain portion in the source?

Here is the original Doctype statement and the head section:

Please try the test. Of course there is HTML in your .eml somehow.
What I want to know is whether there is also a plain text version of it.
It's the separating headers you should be looking at, not your text.
Your text is contained by them, possibly twice.


Good luck

Robert
---


Perhaps that is what is being rendered by OE?
In that case does View, Message in HTML (Alt-Shift-H) do anything for you?

An OE Stationery group would probably be more familiar with this symptom
than here. Unfortunately the most active one is not hosted on this server.


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---


Here is the original Doctype statement and the head section:
================================================== ============
!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"

html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
head
titleemail from Michael/title
meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /
meta name="keywords" content="search keywords go here" /
style type="text/css"
/style
/head

I actually began removing stuff to see if that would help.
First I took out the doctype. Then I simplified the opening
html tag. Finally, I removed the entire head section, but that
was not the problem.

Also, I have to say that I know it's not very pretty code.
Normally, I would have put most of that inside the style tag
within the head, but I had just read a couple of articles about how
some email clients/readers will strip out or ignore the CSS unless
it's put in inline styles. So that's why it looks so 'busy'.
That's not how I've been learning to do it!

Here are two of the articles I looked at:

'How to Create Great HTML emails with CSS'
check out the do's and don't's at the end of the article.

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/cs...le.php/3679231

'HTML EMAILS - TAMING THE BEAST'

http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/html-emails

Also, this one about OE6 disabling HTML viewing for security
reasons, and how to turn it back ON again.

http://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/Outloo...e_Display.html


Robert Aldwinckle wrote:
In that case does View, Message in HTML (Alt-Shift-H) do anything for you?

An OE Stationery group would probably be more familiar with this symptom
than here. Unfortunately the most active one is not hosted on

The menu selection:
View = Message in HTML (Alt+Shift+H)
IS DIMMED OUT!!! I can't select it; it has been disabled.
That must be a clue as to what is happening, but I don't know
how to reverse it??

Thanks,
Michael