But this is how it’s coming through in a web browser based email:
Can someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong? You can see source code etc from the link provided. I do the usual way of doing it, which is apparently open it in Safari after upload, then Apple-I or Mail Contents Of This Page.
The image URL’s if created by Freeway will point to ‘Resources/
theimage.gif’, while a web page on your server knows what to do with
this URL to access the images as it is located on the domain the
images are located in… an email application doesn’t as it is located
on a computer… try opening the source code in BBEdit and do a Find
and Replace for the following:
Note the " at the start of the find and replace strings, this is
deliberate so if any other instance of Resources is in the code where
the URL is not “Resources/theimage” then that word or directory
location will not be over written with the Replace, there are other
images used in the code that are located in another Resource folders
on your server so you don’t want to replace them with the wrong
location. You will need to then Find and Replace the other Resource
locations (such as "…/Resources with the correct location) or try
changing the document set up to use one Resources folder so everything
is located in the same Resources folder and then do the Find and
Replace.
HTH
On Oct 15, 2009, at 10:23 AM, Steve Wright wrote:
Hi guys
I’ve been building a simple email newsletter for my customers and
I’ve been testing it but am having a few problems.
I used HTML 3.2 which I know is recommended for newsletters, but
it’s not showing up the images when it should…
Can someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong? You can see source
code etc from the link provided. I do the usual way of doing it,
which is apparently open it in Safari after upload, then Apple-I or
Mail Contents Of This Page.
So you have uploaded your page/newsletter to your server. Navigated to
it within Safari and clicked “File > Mail contents of this page”?
Then in Apple Mail, you do not see the images?
I have used Xhtml 4 Transitional and also used the Page Action “Email
Ready HTML” and it worked fine for me – my client has viewed it on
their PC using outlook under Vista and said it’s fine too.
Nathan Garner
Creative Director
Austin Wells Design Limited
One Elmgate Drive - Littledown - Bournemouth BH7 7EF
t 01202 301271 e email@hidden w http://www.austinwellsdesign.co.uk
Member of NAPP
On 15 Oct 2009, at 09:23, Steve Wright wrote:
Hi guys
I’ve been building a simple email newsletter for my customers and
I’ve been testing it but am having a few problems.
I used HTML 3.2 which I know is recommended for newsletters, but
it’s not showing up the images when it should…
Can someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong? You can see source
code etc from the link provided. I do the usual way of doing it,
which is apparently open it in Safari after upload, then Apple-I or
Mail Contents Of This Page.
Hi Steve,
Looking at the source code for the page I can see a couple of things
that I think you should consider changing;
All of the images are currently loaded from a relative path
(Resources/myimage.jpg for example). When viewed in a browser these
are relative to the location of the page you are looking at.
Unfortunately html e-mails don’t have a location so relative links
have absolutely no way of finding the images. You can fix this in one
of two ways. The first is to add a tag to the document head as
markup. For example;
Be warned however that I'm not sure if every e-mail client will
understand the base tag, which is why I wrote...
The Remote Resources action (http://www.freewayactions.com/product.php?id=013
). The action will rewrite all of the links to your images, CSS,
JavaScript etc so that the links are all absolute.
The images are placed as styles applied to the table cells. This is
fine for most web browsers but e-mail clients being what they are and
supporting a limited subset of browser features might have problems
with this. I would recommend replacing these for actual images, rather
than background ones, wherever possible.
Regards,
Tim.
On 15 Oct 2009, at 09:23, Steve Wright wrote:
Can someone please tell me what I’m doing wrong? You can see source
code etc from the link provided. I do the usual way of doing it,
which is apparently open it in Safari after upload, then Apple-I or
Mail Contents Of This Page.
Thanks for all your responses. I tried numerous things.
Firstly I tried the Remote Resources action, which directed all my images to site.co.uk/newsletter/Resources/_clear.gif (which doesn’t even exist), then I tried using BBEdit and changed all those ending in _clear.gif to what they should be. But nothing. And now I find that it’s displaying in Googlemail in pieces with no form or shape whatsoever.
If someone could take another look at the source code for me to tell me what it is that I’m actually doing wrong here. It’s bound to be something incredibly simple that I’m getting frustrated about.
Hi Steve,
You still have relative links to the background images in the source
code;
You also have these images as non background images but they are set
to display at 1 pixel square for some reason;
Remove the background images and make the foreground images the right
size size and you'll be a lot better set.
Regards,
Tim.
On 15 Oct 2009, at 11:19, Steve Wright wrote:
Hi guys
Thanks for all your responses. I tried numerous things.
Firstly I tried the Remote Resources action, which directed all my
images to site.co.uk/newsletter/Resources/_clear.gif (which doesn’t
even exist), then I tried using BBEdit and changed all those ending
in _clear.gif to what they should be. But nothing. And now I find
that it’s displaying in Googlemail in pieces with no form or shape
whatsoever.
If someone could take another look at the source code for me to tell
me what it is that I’m actually doing wrong here. It’s bound to be
something incredibly simple that I’m getting frustrated about.
Firstly, thanks for walking me through this, I know it must get boring for guys like you talking to guys like me.
Ok, I’ve added the base line that you suggested to the code and I’ve used the Remote Resources action to redirect the images to the images I would like, but it is still putting them into the code as _clear.gif. Also, I’m not sure what you mean by background images. the mail_lg.gif file is actually the logo which is supposed to be in the top right hand corner. I create the images in Photoshop, then bring them across and place them as HTML. Is that the problem? I’ve only ever been able to place my own images into freehand in HTML boxes, as I don’t know how or if you can just import them as images.
Again, I’m sorry for causing the trouble, but could you explain to me how I’m supposed to make the images background images if that’s what I need to do?
Return to your original Freeway document and change the background
images you’ve applied to the table cells (the mail_lg.gif image for
example) and make these all regular foreground images.
Copy the HTML for this page and use this n your newsletter.
If you are still stuck with this post copy of your Freeway document
online somewhere and I’ll walk you through the process in the file.
Regards,
Tim.
Sorry Tim, but I’m completely lost. I haven’t put any of the images into table cells, I just placed them in select places on the actual freeway page, just as HTML boxes containing an image.
If you want to take a look for yourself, here’s a link:
Just in case anyone is following this…
Steve kindly sent me the Freeway file I think there was a bit of a
misunderstanding about how he should be putting images on the page.
I’ve updated the images in the document and sent it back to Steve with
an explanation of what I did for his review.
Steve, have a look at the revised file and let me know if you have any
questions.
Regards,
Tim.
On 15 Oct 2009, at 12:26, Steve Wright wrote:
Sorry Tim, but I’m completely lost. I haven’t put any of the images
into table cells, I just placed them in select places on the actual
freeway page, just as HTML boxes containing an image.
If you want to take a look for yourself, here’s a link:
Thanks to everyone here, and especially Tim for the extended help, I have it all sorted now and looking good.
I was doing the stupidest thing if using my images as HTML backgrounds instead of just using File–>Import. As expected, it was something stupid on my part.
If there is some technical reason why it is impossible to make an Action do this, then what is the workaround in Freeway, such that I can make background images absolute?
Why is this important? Because I have tiling background images that I want to use on my custom Error 403 and 404 pages. Your action fixes all my other image problems, but the background images still break.
Hi James,
It can and it does. My issue with Steve’s use of background images in
HTML newsletters is that some e-mail clients will simply ignore them.
Regards,
Tim.
On 27 Nov 2009, at 07:00, JDW wrote:
On 15 Oct 2009, 10:31 am, Tim Plumb wrote:
You still have relative links to the background images in the
source code;
Tim, why? Why can’t your Remote Resources Action also work to make
background images absolute links too?
I downloaded the latest version of your action, but in my experience, it is creating absolute URLs for all the graphics EXCEPT the background image. And when I say “background image” I am talking about a tiling image that I setup via the Inspector. When I go to the browser and view the HTML, the link to the background image is NOT absolute. Have a look yourself here:
Pull up the source, then search for “background-image”. You will then see the RELATIVE link inside the “( )” that follow. Note that the link starts with “Resources…” So you see the problem.
Maybe, but i’ve just tried this again and the action modifies the
image source as expected. How are you placing the image in the div
background? With an action or with Freeway? Can you send me a copy of
that page please James so I can take a closer look at it?
Regards,
Tim.
On 28 Nov 2009, at 00:11, JDW wrote:
Tim,
I appreciate your reply.
I downloaded the latest version of your action, but in my
experience, it is creating absolute URLs for all the graphics EXCEPT
the background image. And when I say “background image” I am
talking about a tiling image that I setup via the Inspector. When I
go to the browser and view the HTML, the link to the background
image is NOT absolute. Have a look yourself here:
Pull up the source, then search for “background-image”. You will
then see the RELATIVE link inside the “( )” that follow. Note that
the link starts with “Resources…” So you see the problem.
After speaking with Tim offline, I have resolved the issue. The fix was in using version 2.00 of Tim’s action. For whatever reason, version 2.02 that I had downloaded off his site was giving me trouble. Go figure. And after a bit of fighting with a server side caching issue, I now see that the background image URLs generated by that version 2.00 action are ABSOLUTE. Very nice indeed.
