(Being a tech and MCSE)..I should know this but I don't. HELP!

[BlueJazz]

:) ...I had a customer ask me today if there is a way to have pictures open in E-Mail when sent.
(He has a business and wants to send email to his clients with little gifs or jpgs that will open up when the recipient opens their mail.)

I told him "I don't think so, as that would allow .EXE files to open also...opening the "door" to all kinds of viruses and Trojans"

Was I right?

I'm putting this (also) in the lounge....

[RoyGBiv]

1. You're basically right ...

It all boils down to what the receiver uses to receive the e-mail and what his or her settings are.

With my e-mail client, no one can force me to see an attached file unless I specifically request to view the file. It's there, but if I don't open it, it doesn't open. If someone sends me e-mail written in HTML with embedded graphics or that links to graphics, I don't see those either.

That said, a lot of people don't have these kinds of settings, unfortunately, especially if they use webmail services like yahoo, gmail, etc. By default, most e-mail clients display HTML, so the easiest way to get the graphic to the most people is to do it that way, i.e. an embedded link that automatically displays a graphic when the e-mail is opened.

[fedsron2us]

2. As far as I am aware you are correct.

Most email clients will not allow attachments to open automatically because it would potentially render the recipients machine vulnerable to viruses and trojans. The simple way to make images appear is to send the mail in HTML format and embed hyperlinks to the image on a remote web server. The problem with this set up is that you have to have a connection to the internet open to view the picture. There is no way to determine whether this is available when the recipient actually opens the mail. The alternative is to format your mail using MIME headers and to reference the image attachment from a link within the body of the message. Unfortunately, this is not a straight forward process and it took me a fair number of attempts to get the trick to work. One of your main difficulties will be that you will have to convert your image from its current format into BASE64 in order to get it to display. If you want to find out more about the subject there are countless web sites devoted to the subject. The most useful are the numerous Internet RFC archives. Attached are links to RFC 2387 and RFC 2392 which gives an example of how to code the link

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2387.html
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2392.html

[BlueJazz]

3. Thanks Much! People ..I appreciate your input.

[miss_kitty]

4. I have friends with apple products who send me pics that are open

when the email is opened...I don't know how they do it-and knowing both of them, I be surprised if THEY knew how they do it...

It also shows as an attachment. and I have the images disabled in my email (Thunderbird).

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

5. I copy the picture into memory then paste it directly into

the text box (using .html email style).

This also saves it as an attachment, in case the receiver has an older email client that cannot handle pictures in the message itself.

Is this close to what you had in mind?