DRAGON'S BREATH

The Official Newsletter of Heroes and Dragons

http://www.heroesanddragons.com

How to Send an HTML Newsletter Via Arrow

Important Notes

All links must be absolute pathnames — no relative pathnames.  (Create content offline, referencing elements on the live heroesanddragons.com site, then load the content onto the live site.)

Arrow will not display escape sequences (like — for —).  So use — for —.

Internal style sheets in the HTML will display in most e-mail programs, but external CSSs only work in a few.  Avoid external CSS.

Internal CSS aren't 100% compatible with e-mail programs (e.g. Hotmail), so layer user-defined styles (.section) on top of regular item-by-item formatting (<b><size="2"> etc.).

• Section headings are <H4>s.

• Regular text has a specific size="2" (10pt).

Use Microsoft Outlook Express to generate the message to post to the list.  Regular Outlook doesn't export to the necessary .EML file and may lose header information needed by Arrow.

Arrow sends all images as attachments, increasing the size of the e-mail generated.  (This page, for example, would be 50-80K depending on the length of the text.)  Arrow doesn't allow you to reference the images from an outside site (as far as I know), so keep graphics small and few.

You can use Arrow template macros (%listaddress% etc.), but you should always use <pre> before %statistics% and %listsubscribers% to prevent the lists from piling on top of each other.  (They don't have <p> or <br> tags in them!)

<LI>s in the "CONTENTS" list and bulleted lists (<ul> and <ol>) have a style="margin-bottom: 2" value.  Yahoo will still double-space, but this keeps all mail programs from doing it.

Miraculously, tables seem to work O.K.  (I'll regret typing that later, I'm sure.)

Setting Up HTML Templates

Create the template in FrontPage or a text editor, with an eye toward the Important Notes above.

Upload the template to the Newsletter/Templates directory on heroesanddragons.com.

Open Outlook Express and select "Create New E-Mail > From Web Page."  Open the template page live from the site.

Remove the extraneous space from the top of the message.

"Save As" an .EML file, into the /Arrow/Lists/Dragon'sBreath directory.

Open the .EML file using a text editor (WordPad) and change the headers to:

To: %address%
From: "%listname%" <%listaddress%>
Subject: [DRAGON'S BREATH] - Subject
Date: %time%

"Save As" a .TXT file, into the /Arrow/Lists/Dragon'sBreath directory.

Don't forget to duplicate Welcome.TXT as FAQ.txt (if you intend to maintain a FAQ document for your list).

Sending HTML Messages

Create the e-mail in FrontPage or a text editor, with an eye toward the Important Notes above.

Upload the e-mail to the Newsletter/Archive/Volume08 directory on heroesanddragons.com.  Name it 8.00x.htm.

Open Outlook Express and select "Create New E-Mail > From Web Page."  Open the e-mail page live from the site.

Remove the extraneous space from the top of the message.

Send the message to the Dragon's Breath mailing list, using an address that's subscribed to the list.

The "Disallow Posting?" attribute for the sending e-mail address should be set to "No," to allow the address to post to the list.  Under the list's "Properties," set "Who From" to "List (Don't Add From)" so that the sending address doesn't show up in the "From" field on the message that goes to the list.

Specific ISP/E-Mail Program Notes

Eudora Lite

• Doesn't accept HTML-rich e-mail.  Converts it all to plain text (per Greg Sommers).

America Online (AOL)

• Prompts ask "Do you know who this e-mail is from?" because of the attachments (graphics).

• Version 7.0 displays HTML, but Version 5.0 converts it to plain-text with spacing for the bulleted lists and tables.

• Bookmark links (<a href="#item-01">) don't work.

• Bulleted lists (<ul> and <ol>) display with the correct amount of space in Version 7.0.

• External style sheets do work (including background colors) when mail is checked from the AOL app, but background colors don't display when you check mail online at AOL.com.

Hotmail

• Relative pathnames pop a link to the Hotmail inbox page.

• External style sheets don't work, especially for hyperlink styles or background colors.

• Internal style sheets work pretty well, with background colors displaying.

Yahoo!

• Background colors don't work at all, regardless of internal or external style sheets.

Lycos

• Background colors don't work at all, regardless of internal or external style sheets.

BellSouth

• Webmail displays images as attachments below the e-mail as well as in the e-mail.

• When downloaded to a mail program, images are embedded.  They don't appear as attachments.

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Dragon's Breath is written and administered by Scott Simmons.
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