Adding HTML directly to your signature

With version 1.3 of SignatureProfiler, you can now insert HTML and Web Archive files directly into your signatures through the Signature Preferences pane. Although the process of adding the file is simple, there are some basic things you should know before you try this. See below the fold for more information.

Melvin Rivera has written a tutorial about how to insert HTML with CSS into Mail and the problems concerning the format to use. Much of that article is obsolete now with SignatureProfiler, however the update where he describes the way to make a CSS signature work the best is very relevant (even necessary) here.

To sum up his points:

• Do not include a CSS style sheet
• Use DIV tags instead of HTML, HEAD or BODY
• All CSS styles should be inline
• The styles should even be attached directly to the tag, no classes
• Do not put any image URLs in backgrounds

This will ensure that your HTML can be seen by as many clients as possible. He has a nice example starting point HTML file that he has posted for you to see how that can be done. Here is what it looks like.

In a later version of SignatureProfiler, I hope to include a simpler way to do this type of thing for those who don’t want to learn CSS/HTML. For the moment though you can at least put these in.

Remember that even if you create perfect HTML code and it looks great when you send it, the client that receives the mail may be set to not show HTML or not to load images. It is a good idea to think of this when creating your signature, to be sure that as plain text it will still be, at least, readable!