MindComet

Body Background Images Can Add Depth To Your Email

If you’ve followed this blog for the past couple of years, you know that I’m a big proponent for the removal of background images in email design. This is all due to the popularity of unsupported clients such as Outlook ‘07 and even Gmail to a certain extent. Although, sometimes a series of events will take place that will lead you to change your whole perspective on things.

In this case, that perspective-altering event was visiting Dylan Boyd’s killer Email Wars blog. The post that really piqued my interest included a screenshot of a BEEEAUTIFUL email from Columbia. The forest-landscape background totally threw me for a loop. As far as background images go, they usually consist of a gradient or repeating image, but rarely do I ever see photo-realisitc backgrounds in the bodies of emails. It caught my attention to say the least.

I then remembered that the geniuses at CampaignMonitor discovered a method of getting background images to display in the body of an email. So even this email could be displayed as intended in Outlook ‘07. Win.

I think this should be an example for creative online marketing and advertising departments to stretch their email designs out a bit. Try incorporating big, sweeping background images. I think most B2C email campaigns could benefit from at least testing this.

Have you seen any other brands using photo-realistic background images in the body of their emails? Provide examples in the comments.

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Oct. 07, 2009

YOU FIX

The Email Standards Project by way of Campaign Monitor is pleading with the developers at Microsoft. Microsoft are insisting on keeping the Word HTML rendering engine (most recently used with Outlook 2007) in place for their next release of a predictably disappointing and bloated email client, Outlook 2010.

For anyone who has designed and coded an email in the past three years knows how big a pain in the butt Outlook 2007 is to work with.  There has been an outcry from day one about it’s drawbacks, as it has done nothing to push the flexibility and growth of email forward.  It’s done quite the opposite, I’m afraid. For starters, it doesn’t allow background images and it has crap support for CSS. See Campaign Monitor’s example here:

Microsoft wants to continue their reign of mediocrity, and I for one, have had ENOUGH.

If you go to fixoutlook.org you can use your Twitter account to send a clear message to Microsoft:

“Wow! @msofficeus is breaking HTML email by using Word to display emails in Outlook 2010. See http://fixoutlook.org and RT”

The site displays every Twitter user who has included “fixoutlook.org” in a tweet. As of 9AM this morning, there have been over 10,000 tweets.  This is an incredibly effective way to help our pleas resonate. It puts face to the name for the petition, which I’m not sure has been done before. Hopefully, this will force Microsoft developers to second guess their decision… Hopefully it will make a difference.

So let’s show the fatcats at MS what the mob mentality can accomplish.  Let our voices be heard!

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Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jun. 24, 2009

Conditional CSS Comments for Outlook 2007

The team at SitePoint have recently implemented the use conditional CSS comments in email, targeting Outlook 2007 specifically.

Conditional comments first made their arrival to target specific versions of Internet Explorer.  With these comments, you can write specific CSS rules for any internet browser.  Check out some quick guidelines here.

The code to target Outlook 2007:

Now you wouldn’t use this code all that often.  Campaign Monitor gives us an example of using it with unordered lists.  Apparently, ULs (with bullets) don’t appear with bullets in Outlook 2007, so in this case, it would be a perfect time to incorporate a conditional comment.

If you start using this technique, comment below and tell us your thoughts.  We’ll start employing this technique as well so check back for any further developments.

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Posted by MindComet on Jul. 23, 2008

Body Background Images In Outlook ‘07

We all know that background images don’t display with Outlook 2007—which consequently sent designing HTML emails back 5 years or so.  Well low and behold, that’s not the case anymore.

The incredibly talented and resourceful blokes at Campaign Monitor recently stumbled upon a bit of CSS that can remedy one instance of blocked background images; specifically for the body.  The effective CSS is below:

background-image: url(‘http://www.abcwidgets.com/bg.jpg’);
background-repeat: repeat-y no-repeat;
background-position: top center;
background-color: #d9c092;

The key to the code above that seems to please Outlook 2007 is the ‘repeat’ property. Evidently with BOTH repeat-y and no-repeat, the background image shows up.

Try it for yourself and comment below!

But until somebody stumbles upon a way to make background images display in divs or tables, you can find me in the corner resenting Microsoft.

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Posted by MindComet on Jul. 08, 2008

DPI Settings With Outlook 2007

The geniuses over at Bronto have uncovered yet another flaw with the always problematic Outlook 2007.  By testing to different computers using Outlook ‘07 at the their office, there were always glaring inconsistencies with two specific machines.  Yet, the two computers that always had issues would always break in their own special ways.

Through diligent research, it was determined that the two computers had separate DPI (dots per inch) settings.  The default DPI setting on Windows machines is 96.  One of the computers was set to 120 DPI (the large setting) and 82 DPI (a custom setting).  The former would blow out the images, causing breaks and the latter would shrink the images also causing rendering flaws.

Basically, only Outlook 2007 (and not any other desktop email client such as Thunderbird) will break any email with a setting other than the standard DPI setting of 96.

This doesn’t sit well with me considering that no matter how meticulous you are when testing emails it still might end up broken when it reaches some users’ inboxes.  The only remedy that comes to mind is to spread the word and awareness through Email Standards Project.  If there’s enough outcry from the community maybe, just maybe, developers will wise-up and listen.

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Posted by MindComet on May. 05, 2008