BYTE MARKS
Cracking the HTML e-mail code
By Burt Lum
While considering a topic for this week's column, I received several cool HTML e-mails. Personally, I prefer plain text e-mails, but that is obviously not where the future of e-mail is headed. So with adventure in mind, I decided to determine exactly how these HTML e-mails get generated and sent out as the body of an e-mail message.
It did not take me long to find out that the process is not uniform for the Mac and PC. This is what I learned.
First off, here are my starting parameters: Macintosh G4 running Outlook Express, version 4.5 or 5.0.6. This is for testing purposes. I am also using Internet Explorer, version 5.1.
The results from my Google search are encouraging. The first stop was a very helpful article at www.golivein24.com/HTMLemail. It provided a good overview of what to consider when developing your HTML e-mail and what steps to take to deliver your message.
My options: The first was to configure Outlook Express with an available Applescript and the second was to use Netscape Mail. Given my adoption of OE as my default mail client, that is where I started.
The recommendation for OE was to download an Applescript from www.applescriptcentral.com/paul called Send Complex HTML v. 1.2.1 by Paul Berkowitz.
I had trouble downloading from this site and had to go to an alternative site at homepage.mac.com/berkowit28 to successfully download the script.
I copied the script to the Script Menu Items folder in OE, version 4.5, but to my frustration, the script never worked. In the case of OE 5.0.6, the script wasn't even recognized in the dropdown menu.
Another recommendation was to use Netscape 6.2, which turned out equally unsatisfying. The mail application did not function properly and I was never able to paste an HTML document into the e-mail body.
I haven't given up yet. I am determined to make some sense of HTML e-mails on a Macintosh. So one day I will write about my successful implementation of these multimedia e-mails — but today was not that day. ;-)
Burt Lum is a click away at burt@brouhaha.net.
