Email signature with images

Question

Hello,

I am trying to build a HTML + Images Signature in Mozilla Thunderbird. I know that this isn't the most apropriated software to create email signatures... but I can't think of another one that is free.

My image is attatched to the email itself. And it displays good in some Webmail Managers like Hotmail... however... in Gmail this doesn't happens. Gmail blocks my image by default.

Q: Is there any way to to solve this problem with my images, and to show them by default on all Webmail Managers?

---

This is the generated HTML by Thunderbird:

<span class="Apple-style-span"
 style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium;">
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span
 class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><font
 class="Apple-style-span" color="#da971b"><big><big><big><big><font
 color="#575757"><b></b></font></big></big></big></big><img
 alt="alternative text" src="http://www.mywebsite.com/img/image.gif"
 width="61" height="51"><br>
<br>
W:<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></font><a
 href="http://www.click.pt"&gt;&lt;font class="Apple-style-span"
 color="#7799d2">www.mywebsite.com</font></a></span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span
 class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><font
 class="Apple-style-span" color="#da971b">E:</font><span
 class="Apple-converted-space"> <font color="#888888">info</font></span><font
 class="Apple-style-span" color="#888888">@mywebsite.com</font></span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span
 class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><font
 class="Apple-style-span" color="#da971b">T:</font><span
 class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><font
 class="Apple-style-span" color="#888888">+351 000 000 000</font></span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span
 class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><font
 class="Apple-style-span" color="#da971b">F:</font><span
 class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><font
 class="Apple-style-span" color="#888888">+351 000 000 000</font></span></font></div>
</span>

Answer 1

Unfortunately, email clients block remote images for security reasons (so that tracking can't occur when the image is loaded). No way I know of to get around it ... if a user wants to see the images embedded within an HTML-formatted email, they will choose to "show unsafe images". Depending on the email client they can change their own settings to automatically render the images. That's their choice though.

Answer 2

You've not embedded your image within the signature. It's just referring to an external image, which most mail clients will block these days - think of all those 1x1 tracking pixels in spam that would otherwise mark you as a live target.

The alternatives are:

1. encode the image withing the HTML using a data URI
2. go for broke and embed the image as ASCII art.
3. somehow force Tbird and/or other clients to include the image as an attachment automatically, which you can then refer to via a "cid:" URI in the HTML.