Image in HTML Email: how is this done ?

I'm currently trying to figure out how to get a decent html email working with images. All solutions I've found so far get blocked at the client side, forcing the reciever to click "show images" or something of that nature.

But my boss has just forwarded me an email which manages to get around most image filters. It shows perfectly in outlook express, apple mail, and gmail, although hotmail still blocks it.

When I use Inspect element in gmail to examine it, the code for the image shows as:

Code:

<img border="0" width="700" height="127" src="?ui=2&amp;ik=496dab37ca&amp;view=att&amp;th=12ba0b2eb94a09e5&amp;attid=0.2&amp;disp=emb&amp;realattid=115e7f3d68a5e75c_0.1&amp;zw" alt="Children in Scotland Logo">

The src attribute is confusing, what's going on there?

gmail and apple do not show this as an attachment, although hotmail does. How can I send an email with an image like this one?

If anyone would like the full email for inspection, pm me an address to forward it to

 

Oldest trick in the book. Basically, you hit a "handler" on your server which dynamically responds (writes out the response stream) the data for the image with the proper image mime type.

 

You make it sound so simple :-D

Could you possibly provide more info on how I could do this? my PHP knowledge is fairly basic

 

No clue how to do this in PHP. but I could do it in C#

 

Well that's getting disturbingly complex. I didn't think C# was for serverside apps.

Not really keen on learning a new programming language for this, is there an easier way? Perhaps some already made application that can run on the server to do the job? We have a webserver and an email server to work with.

 

C# is not a scripting language like PHP is. It's a compiled language and LIVES in the "server side" of things when it comes to web apps. Aside from that, I'm sure there is some pre-writtent PHP script out there that does what you want. (ref: http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php?topic=141121.msg600971#msg600971)

 

Hello WarKirby,
can you please tell me if you have already found the solution to this image embedding problem? I am trying to do this as well with no success so far.

Regards,
vesolovski

 

Hi vesolovski.

Sorry you haven't gotten a reply yet to your very first post at MG.

Why not try starting a new thread and describe specifically what you have tried and what issues you are having.

It's just possible that no one has anything better to offer at this time.

 

I don't know that any of these will help, but you can try them. These are ways to include images in HTML email:

External link
Just give a regular <img> link to the image's URL. If it is local, the program may not block it.

Multipart/Attachments
(You probably won't be able to do this in a program that just lets you edit the HTML part of the email. You need to edit the whole source.)
MHTML:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2557
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2110 (This one is obsolete, but I included it in case it explains any odd stuff in an old email.)

cid and mid URIs:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2111
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2392

Raw data URIs
As a URI, browsers tend to give the data protocol lower security settings, fearing injection or other issues. It's possible there may be some email readers that allow it, from a local sender or something.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2397
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme

There may be other ways, as well. I included the ones I know about.
The example given in a previous post could be a local URL, or perhaps an MHTML attachment.