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Main => Everything Else => Topic started by: shmokes on February 15, 2008, 06:41:38 pm

Title: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: shmokes on February 15, 2008, 06:41:38 pm: Does anyone here know what's going on here? I'm trying to make an image-based signature that automatically appears at the bottom of emails sent from Outlook. It worked fine in 2003, but 2007 is broken. Whether I use HTML code to pull an image from the web, or go through the menus and select an image from my hard drive, it does strange things. Often the images get distorted. Sometimes the signature is super small. Sometimes it's super big. I cannot figure out what's going on. Anyone?
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: Zero_Hour on February 15, 2008, 06:56:40 pm: Pure conjecture on my part, but I would guess it is related to Outlook 2007 using XML for more things, and MS mucking up the implementation. Also, it's my understanding that Outlook used to use IE to render HTML e-mails, and now it uses Word to render HTML. That may have some impact if the rendering engines are significantly different (which they probably are). :dunno
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: RayB on February 15, 2008, 09:23:00 pm: post examples of how you're embedding it. It's just html. Maybe you're using non standard code...
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: shmokes on February 21, 2008, 10:51:05 am: Quote from: RayB on February 15, 2008, 09:23:00 pm
post examples of how you're embedding it. It's just html. Maybe you're using non standard code...

Could be. My wife doesn't know HTML. Neither do I. I suggested that she probably needs to set up tables, but she said she tried and couldn't figure it out. One thing to keep in mind is that since Office 2007 ditched the Internet Explorer engine to render HTML in favor of having the Word engine render both text and HTML, the HTML capabilities of Outlook have been substantially crippled. For example, it can't handle CSS at all. Anyway, here's her code and an example of what it needs to look like. She's has managed through trial and error to get somewhat close, but she needs it to look virtually exactly like it does in the JPEG.

Quote

<html>
 
<img height="94" width="73" src="http://theretailoutsource.com/images/TRO_web1.gif" style="float: left; padding: 0px 23px 0px 0;">
Brett Beveridge 
<tro style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #666666; font-size: 11px;">President and CEO 
<a href="mailto:bbeveridge@theretailoutsource.com" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif; font-size: 11px; color: #666666; text-decoration: none;">bbeveridge@theretailoutsource.com</a> 
5201 Blue Lagoon Drive Suite 620 Miami, Florida 33126 
O 305.539.3810 Ext. 8001 F 305.266.0071 (private) 
<a href="http://theretailoutsource.com" title="visit theretailoutsource.com" style="color: #666666; text-decoration:none ">theretailoutsource.com</a></tro>
 
 

<img height="37" width="193" src="http://theretailoutsource.com/images/TRO_web2.gif" style="float: left; padding: 6px 0px 0px 0;">
</html>
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: ChadTower on February 21, 2008, 10:57:20 am: That's going to get chopped up oddly on a lot of recipient mailboxes anyway. Not everyone uses Outlook to read their mail. Not everyone has the same display settings in their client. Not everyone is using the same version of Outlook. What you "fix" here could break for people using 2003. Elaborate email signatures are just asking for weirdness on the other end at least as often as they look pretty.

EDIT: why would you want a mailto link in an email signature? They're already in the email. They can hit reply.
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: saint on February 21, 2008, 11:17:51 am: Here's my suggestion as a network manager.

DON'T DO THAT!

*rant* *rave* *fume*

(extra bandwidth, incompatibility with some non-Outlook email clients, various Outlook security concerns, etc)
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: ChadTower on February 21, 2008, 11:39:04 am: I agree. My suggestion, if you absolutely have to have that layout for a sig, is to use the jpg you just posted. Don't lay it all out in code.
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: Hoopz on February 21, 2008, 12:01:12 pm: Text only. No f'd up graphics, backgrounds or any of that crap.
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: RayB on February 21, 2008, 03:35:17 pm: I've never heard of the <TRO> tag. Maybe that's at fault here. I'm also not sure you need the <HTML> tags.

try this:

<table width="400" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="4">
<tr>
<td><img height="94" width="73" src="http://theretailoutsource.com/images/TRO_web1.gif" style="float: left; padding: 0px 23px 0px 0;">Brett
Beveridge 
<tro style="font-family: Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #666666; font-size: 11px;">President
and CEO 
<a href="mailto:bbeveridge@theretailoutsource.com" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif; font-size: 11px; color: #666666; text-decoration: none;">bbeveridge@theretailoutsource.com</a> 
5201 Blue Lagoon Drive Suite 620 Miami, Florida 33126 
O 305.539.3810 Ext. 8001 F 305.266.0071 (private) 
<a href="http://theretailoutsource.com" title="visit theretailoutsource.com" style="color: #666666; text-decoration:none ">theretailoutsource.com</a></tro>

</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><img height="37" width="193" src="http://theretailoutsource.com/images/TRO_web2.gif" style="float: left; padding: 6px 0px 0px 0;"></td>
</tr>
</table>
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: ChadTower on February 21, 2008, 03:36:10 pm: Quote from: RayB on February 21, 2008, 03:35:17 pm
I've never heard of the <TRO> tag.

She is sending him a subtle hint (http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/term/A2B7ABF5-4DEC-4193-8E8D7D4358BD66D3).
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: shmokes on February 21, 2008, 04:33:35 pm: She would love to not do that. She's told the person that he shouldn't do that for all of those reasons. Unfortunately he insists, and he pays the bills.

And for some odd reason Outlook 2007 screws with the image proportions if you just use a JPEG. And there seems to be little rhyme or reason to how it decides to butcher a given image: shrink it, enlarge it, squish it horizontally or vertically, etc.
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: ChadTower on February 21, 2008, 04:36:05 pm: Quote from: shmokes on February 21, 2008, 04:33:35 pm
And for some odd reason Outlook 2007 screws with the image proportions if you just use a JPEG. And there seems to be little rhyme or reason to how it decides to butcher a given image: shrink it, enlarge it, squish it horizontally or vertically, etc.

That butchering is probably still more consistent than the recipient displays of a coded signature. You have no way of controlling at all how it gets shown on the other end. It will be even worse if a person has html turned off - and there are a lot of people who do that.
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: shmokes on February 21, 2008, 04:44:31 pm: I don't know how all clients work, but I know that if you have HTML turned off in Novell GroupWise the signatures simply don't show up. Hopefully that's how most email clients work, as it seems silly to show somebody a bunch of gobbledeegook simply because they don't want to see HTML emails.
Title: Re: Weirdnes in Graphics for Outlook Signatures
Post by: ChadTower on February 21, 2008, 04:47:40 pm: IIRC most have settings that determine what you'll see of an HTML email. Some will see a text version with the html stripped. Others will see the raw HTML.