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aksmac
11-23-2009, 05:14 PM
Hi All,

Need a little advice on an eshot im doing for a client.

Ive done the artwork in InDesign, exported as a jpeg, placed into DW, added hyperlinks/hotspots where relevant, but now what? how do I publish it or export or save to a format I can send to the client to send out as an email?

Any advice would be great. Im using OS X, CS 4, have a MBP 2Ghz dual core, 2Gb ram, 250HD.

Kind Regards
Akhter
kristingish
11-23-2009, 09:50 PM
Hi Akhtar,

Firstly I'm unsure of what you mean by an 'eshot'.

I'm guessing though by the rest of your post that you're trying to format an email newsletter.. so, assuming that is correct, I have a couple of questions.

1. What kind of service or method does your client use to distribute this newsletter. Is it a paid service or is it something run on his server, etc?

2. Are you familiar with how to use CSS? If so, have you utilized that in formatting this project?

Thanks,

Kristin
aksmac
11-24-2009, 03:58 AM
Hi Kristin,

Phew, thanks for the reply... was thinking noone was gonna lend a pityful ear to me there..

Yes, you're correct, its an email newsletter. To answer your questions:

1. Client uses regular email, no frills. (Used to send out jpegs as attachments)

2. Not familiar with CSS. (Learning though)


Screenshot of what I've done:

http://i47.tinypic.com/25s3h1t.png

or

http://i47.tinypic.com/25s3h1t.png

Thanks again, looking forward to your reply.

Regards
aks
it career
11-24-2009, 05:48 AM
You can use some autoresponder to distribute the news letter.
aksmac
11-24-2009, 12:05 PM
at the moment its just a jpeg with hyperlinks which I've done in DW. I just need to know how to finish this and save it as a format ready to email. Is it not that easy?

(grr... to the web...)
aksmac
11-24-2009, 11:53 PM
at the moment its just a jpeg with hyperlinks which I've done in DW. I just need to know how to finish this and save it as a format ready to email. Is it not that easy?

(grr... to the web...)



Anyone....?
kristingish
11-25-2009, 09:00 PM
Hi Sorry,

For some reason I'm not getting notified of responses to my message so I apologize for the delay.

You stated that you are not familiar with CSS and so I'm not really sure where to start.

If you switch to code view in Dreamweaver, copy your code and then post it in this thread it would be very helpful.

A couple of tips:

All of the images in your newsletter must be online already so that the users email program or service can retrieve them when they open the email. If they are not online you need to upload them to a server and then update the filepaths to the server location. If this is over your head, let me know.

If you set up this document using a Dreamweaver template or an external stylesheet, modifications need to be made because you cannot use external or embedded style sheets in an email newsletter as far as I know. You will be limited to content within the <body > tag of the HTML.

Ill try to help you more once I see your code.

For additional tips please see the following article.
http://groundwire.org/support/articles/css-and-email-newsletters

Kristin
kristingish
11-25-2009, 09:03 PM
Also, another option would be to use an image map.

If you have Fireworks, it will generate the code for you automatically as well as export image slices etc.

Thanks

Kristin
aksmac
11-25-2009, 09:50 PM
Hi Kirsten,

Heres the code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>imaancollsale</title>
</head>

<body>
<div align="center"><img src="file:///FOLDERS/Clients/Imaan Collections/IC_MailShot-sale-nov.jpg" width="800" height="600" border="0" usemap="#Map" />
<map name="Map" id="Map">
<area shape="rect" coords="33,53,353,185" href="http://www.imaancollections.com/" />
<area shape="rect" coords="44,514,220,533" href="#" />
<area shape="rect" coords="41,466,223,487" href="mailto:info@imaancollections.com?subject=SALE" />
<area shape="rect" coords="706,521,740,530" href="mailto:info@imaancollections.co.uk?subject=Unsubscribe" />
</map>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Most of what you wrote doesnt make any sense to me, but Im installing fireworks from my CS4 to try that out.

Again my q is: I've completed what I want in DW, how do I save this now to send as an email for my client to forward to her list.

Thanks
kristingish
11-25-2009, 10:19 PM
So, luckily this is fairly simple.


What you are going to want to do is to upload the image 'IC_MailShot-sale-nov.jpg' to a web server. Once you do that change the file page to be from the location on your harddrive to the actual web address of the image, ie. 'http://www.host.com/imagelocation.jpg'.

After that is done take the part of the code that is shown below, which is the DIV that holds all your content (but remember to update the file path to the image!, and put that in the email

<div align="center"><img src="file:///FOLDERS/Clients/Imaan Collections/IC_MailShot-sale-nov.jpg" width="800" height="600" border="0" usemap="#Map" />
<map name="Map" id="Map">
<area shape="rect" coords="33,53,353,185" href="http://www.imaancollections.com/" />
<area shape="rect" coords="44,514,220,533" href="#" />
<area shape="rect" coords="41,466,223,487" href="mailto:info@imaancollections.com?subject=SALE" />
<area shape="rect" coords="706,521,740,530" href="mailto:info@imaancollections.co.uk?subject=Unsubscribe" />
</map>
</div>

In order to put it in the email you need to make sure that you are in the HTML view of the email formatting. How you get in there depends on what email service or program you use. If you have any questions please let me know how they plan to send it out (Thunderbird, Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, etc) and I will try to help you further.

You're done with the hard parts though!

Good Job

Kristin