Mac Forum / Applications / Outlook Express / July 2004

OE for Mac cannot by itself create true HTML formatted mails. For
this, one must use the AppleScript - Send Complex HTML.

http://www.scriptbuilders.net/

Place the applescript in the Script Menu Items folder
(HD>DOCUMENTS>MICROSOFT USER DATA>SCRIPT MENU ITEMS)

Then READ the instructions that come with the Script.

Be advised though, that you must know how to write HTML to create the
content of an original, true HTML mail.

When you compose and send a true HTML mail in Mac OE (or any e-mail client
really), the HTML colors, text, text formatting, tables, and general
layout that is described by the HTML code, is rendered in the body of the
e-mail the same way that a real browser window would interpret it.

BUT, just like a browser rendering a webpage, any actual images (or
Shockwave/Flash files) must be called from  the web somewhere.

So when you send a true HTML mail using the AppleScript "Send Complex HTML",
any images that you wish to be displayed in the HTML mail message must be
placed on the Net somewhere first, and then referred to in the HTML code.

So you create your HTML code, but make your IMG SRC refer to a file on your
web site, or homepage server space at your ISP, or somewhere else:

<IMG SRC="http://www.myserver.com/my_picture_file.gif" etc...>

<EMBED SRC="http://www.myserver.com/my_shockwave_file.swf" etc...>

Then when the mail is received, the HTML layout is created locally from the
embedded code, but the images are fetched from the net and rendered in the
layout.

(There may now be a way to have the HTML fetch the images from an attached
file, instead of the 'net, but I'm not sure on that.)

=========================
Kenny F