HTML Mail

CustomMailer supports the sending of HTML mail in addition to regular plain text mail. Sending HTML mail requires some extra work, but the results are well worth it.

Using HTML mail and Alternate Text

Many email clients, in particular Netscape Messenger, Microsoft Outlook, and Eudora, now support the ability to read mail received in HTML format. HTML mail messages can contain multiple fonts, colors, backgrounds, images, links, tables, CGI scripts, even applets! Basically, an HTML mail message can contain anything that might appear in a regular HTML web page. Moreover, CustomMailer can fully customize these HTML mail messages, so you can use CustomMailer tags and macros to create any part of your HTML email message, whether your content or the HTML tags themselves.

Some email clients (for example, older versions of Lotus Notes, traditional Unix email clients, and other proprietary email programs) will not display mail in HTML format. For this reason CustomMailer also supports the provision within the Internet mail standard for an "Alternate Text" message (technically, this is the MIME type: multipart/alternative). The alternate text message is written in plain text and accompanies the HTML message. If a particular recipient's mail reader doesn't support HTML, they should instead see the Alternate Text message in their mailer and may (or may not) receive the HTML message as a file attachment. CustomMailer allows the HTML and Alternate Text message to be completely independent of each other and both can be fully customized using CustomMailer tags and macros.

NOTE: Some mail readers that don't support HTML will display a text-only view extracted from the HTML message rather than the Alternate Text message. Thus, you are advised to compose the HTML and Alternate Text parts of your message so that either is intelligible no matter how your recipients' mail readers handle HTML mail.

Composing your HTML mail message

The easiest way to create your HTML mail message is to use your favorite browser or other HTML creation tool. Simply compose your message in HTML and insert tags like |FirstName| or |Date| as you wish inside your HTML mail message. If you are ambitious, you can even have CustomMailer tags and macros generate parts of the HTML tag syntax itself. Save your HTML mail in a file ending with .htm or .html. When CustomMailer customizes the HTML mail message for a given recipient, all the tags and macros are expanded in the usual manner, and the final result is the actual HTML that gets sent to that recipient.

NOTE: Beginning with CustomMailer 2.0, the default tag indicator character was changed from "%" to "|". This is primarily because a number of places in HTML syntax make use of the "%" character, for example, when indicating that a given image or table should span "50%" of the page width, so that using some other tag indicator character became advisable. The vertical bar character "|" seems to be a safe choice for both HTML and non-HTML messages and is recommended.

Inside CustomMailer, use the "Open Message Template" menu command to open your .htm or .html file. This will signal CustomMailer that you want to use HTML mail. CustomMailer will split the message body area horizontally into two areas. The left area will show your HTML Source and the right area shows your Alternate Text message. A split panel divides the HTML Source and Alternate Text and can be dragged to resize the two areas.

A new button also appears to the left of the HTML Source, labeled ">>HTML Page". When you hit this button, CustomMailer will start up your default browser and show you the HTML source as a real HTML page inside your browser. You can view in your browser either the Template (shown in blue = tagged message for all recipients) or the expanded Message (shown in black = expanded message for a selected recipient), depending upon whether you were in "View as Template" or "View as Message" mode when you clicked on ">>HTML Page".

Even better, you can "Edit" either the Template or the Message in your browser. If you simply "Save" the result in your browser back into the file name that the browser opened up with (which CustomMailer sets to tempCustomMailerHTMLDocument.html), then when you return to CustomMailer your changes will be automatically read back as your updated Template if you were in View as Template mode, or as your updated Message if you were (and still are) in View as Message mode. This level of integration between your browser and CustomMailer lets you easily go back and forth to compose and test both your HTML mail template and customized messages. You do not need to exit your browser when going back to CustomMailer, just be sure to "Save" any edits you make in the browser and CustomMailer will pick them up when the main CustomMailer windows is brought to the front (CustomMailer does this by looking for whether the "Last Modified" date on the "temp" file has changed). Likewise, if you make further changes to the HTML in CustomMailer and wish to view them back in the browser, just hit ">>HTML Page" again.

You can also compose your HTML mail message directly in CustomMailer if you don't mind working directly in HTML source code. Use the "New Message Template" command and specify that you want an "HTML" message. You can then type (or cut-and-paste) HTML source directly into the HTML Source area. Even if you do most of your editing in the browser, you will probably find it useful to make small, quick changes directly in the CustomMailer HTML source window.

To complete your HTML mail message, you fill out the message header fields (TO, FROM, etc.) in the standard way.

Alternate Text

You enter your alternate text (plain text) message in the Alternate Text area. This area works exactly like a regular CustomMailer plain text (.txt) mail message and you can enter anything you want including tags and macros. When you create a new HTML mail message, a minimal Alternate Text message is provided by default that says:

This email message was sent in HTML format.
If your email reader is not able to display
HTML email and has substituted this message,
please contact the sender to obtain a copy
you can read.

Some CustomMailer users just use this message for the Alternate Text. Others change it to contain a URL link to a generic copy of the HTML message residing on their web site, for example:

If you can't read this message, please go to http://www.yourdomain.com/copyOfMessage.html

Other CustomMailer users like to have a full plain text equivalent of their HTML message for the Alternate Text. In this case the easiest thing to do is to complete your HTML message, then view your HTML message in your favorite web browser, then while viewing the HTML page in the browser (not the HTML source), select and copy the desired text and paste it into the Alternate Text area. You may need to edit the line breaks and other spacing that results. NOTE: In Netscape, if you are in Edit Mode when you select and copy your text, then no superfluous line breaks will be introduced.

Also, you can also have a completely blank Alternate Text message, in which case CustomMailer sends a pure text/html MIME message with no multipart/alternative portion.

Finally, CustomMailer users may prefer to compose an independent plain text message not equivalent to the HTML message. You can either compose the message directly in the right hand text area or compose the message in a separate word processing application, then copy and paste the contents into the right hand text area. There currently is no way to read the Alternate Text portion of the message from a separate file.

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