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wienerdog
12-01-2005, 02:26 PM
Can Cascading Style Sheets be used in an HTML e-mail I'm sending out for my company? We use a mass-emailing system that manages and tracks subscriptions, but images need to be uploaded to their server to work.
It doesn't say anything about CSS, so I'm thinking external CSS won't work on an e-mail your sending, just on HTML pages that can link to the CSS file on your server.
Is this right?
How are you making them now? Are you using an HTML page? I don't really do this often so I'm no expert. But if you're including images, you're technically "linking" to that image, so why not CSS? But -- why would your CSS even need to be external for something like this, it's just a one-pager. If you can set up the html page, just stick the css in the header.
DeleteYourself
12-01-2005, 02:45 PM
I do the same at my job, weiner, and the answer is yes. You can use CSS in html based e-mails. BUT, it comes with some limitations. I tend to include my style sheet internally. However, linking to an external on your server may work, too. Just make sure to use absolute links for everything. Also, I'm not sure if all CSS attributes are supported in e-mails. Certainly font styles, sizes, colors, etc work. But when it comes to css positioning, you may find that not everything is kosher.
I have found some problems, though. My CSS works great with e-mail clients like Entourage and Outlook, but gets all screwed up in web-based e-mail. Not sure why this happens, but I'd love some input from someone who knows more than me.
wienerdog
12-01-2005, 02:54 PM
The problem I've had is with the font style of my hyperlinks. It seems the HTML page is fine when I preview it and see it on the server. But the HTML e-mail in Outlook seems to be over-riding the font style I defined in Dreamweaver for all the link settings (active, hover, etc.). I defined the font as:
xx-small
Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, "Trebuchet MS", Tahoma
Color is 79B53E
with and Underline
but the link font is showing as Times Roman in blue on links that didn't have individual font tags. Should I define a span class and use that along with the link styles to over-ride anything Outlook may be doing to the link styles?
DeleteYourself
12-01-2005, 03:46 PM
word.
wienerdog
12-02-2005, 06:06 PM
Well, that worked. The distribution company has a place to enter my HTML, but then it seems I switched to that becoming an HTML editor, which removed my CSS. Everything looks dandy now. Thanks!