I've just installed Thunderbird (trying to wean myself off IE) and one of the things I need to be able to do is send HTML emails.

I know I can go Insert->HTML and throw in a bunch of HTML - but instead of taking that HTML and just sending it, Thunderbird decides its too cool for that, goes off and downloads the images, MIME-encodes them and stuffs them into the mail source.

Very high tech, but not what I want. Anyone know if there's a way to just get it to send the HTML I pasted and not do anything more complicated?

edit: should be noted that this is default behaviour in OE as well, but it has an option to disable it and not send images as attachments.

humm silly suggestion, but couldn't you just simply copy and pasted the HTML into the body of the email? I think the insert -> HTML will instruct Thunderbird to render the HTML in the body instead of just putting the code there and send it.

I just did a little test and when I copy and paste the text directly into the email message body it simply puts the html source there.

Is this what you're talking about?

Jim found this: bing which does what I want, albeit painfully. It sounds like its partially by design and partially because of this bug which looks like a 7 year holy war of preferences.

I just did a little test and when I copy and paste the text directly into the email message body it simply puts the html source there.

Yeh, if you send that though the recipient just gets a face full of HTML.

Yeh, if you send that though the recipient just gets a face full of HTML.

If they don't want to see the HTML, why do you need to send it?

Here's a tip: The HTML that outlook and thunderbird require is not the same HTML that is correct for making a website. Some things, especially to do with CSS, just won't work. You'd think they would just use the rendering engine from the browser... no... they didn't....

If they don't want to see the HTML, why do you need to send it?

? 99.99% of people don't want to see HTML - they wanted to see it rendered as a web page

I'd just give up trog; most mail readers turn off remote loading of images by default (for privacy reasons) so they will look like arse anyway.

Or wind up in the spam folder if you go and "design" your email

cmd+i in safari does this beautifully.. probably only an OS X thing though. my workmate tests his html sends with thunderbird (I work for a digital marketing agency) so I can find out.

Some things, especially to do with CSS, just won't work. You'd think they would just use the rendering engine from the browser... no... they didn't....

yup.. Outlook 2007 using the Word rendering engine for email = email goes back a decade.. http://email-standards.org is a good reference

Interesting that site gives Thunderbird an excellent score, I'm not sure it performed that way for me...

Thunderbird performs like s*** for me with HTML emails...maybe I just suck :)

I'd just give up trog; most mail readers turn off remote loading of images by default (for privacy reasons) so they will look like arse anyway.

Yeh that's an acceptable outcome

no ur

Slightly more seriously, what you are trying to do will just end up looking like this for most people:

http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/8982/s***mailmp6.jpg

Is that an acceptable outcome?

Yep! Such is the price of HTML newsletters, and when your client wants to send them, you send them.

I am intricately familiar with the woes of sending HTML email; I have been doing it for years - in fact, before the time of mail clients hiding images by default. I've done battle with Outlook 2007's retarded renderer as well, and just as quickly given up, just like the Xbox team did :)

yeah mate, it's the expected and desired outcome

this is something trog has been doing for years, all that's happening is he's changing the client he does the send with

we know what it looks like in people's mail clients cos we test it every single week in a variety of clients

this thread is _purely_ about the fact that we couldn't find an in-gui option in thunderbird to tell it not to fetch a copy of remotely-referred to images and mime-encode them within the send. trog doens't want that to happen because it means fifty hundred million newsletter emails go out substantially larger in size than they would if they were not mime encoded. at this point, that is less desirable to us than users making the choice in their mail client whether to download the images or not by pressing a button when they open the email.

shutup trog I'M handling this

Excuse me, I will decide what this thread is about thank you very much.

:D

It's unfortunate that outlook is the only decent email client i have ever used.

That is unfortunate