I understand that HTML emails need to use really old school layouts - as per lots of other answers on SO (e.g. HTML email: tables or divs?, HTML Email using CSS).
However, there seems to be some debate over whether it's still a good idea to use spacer gifs in email.
For example, compare these three layouts:
DIMENSIONS:
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100">
<tr>
<td width="100" height="10"></td>
</tr>
</table>
WITH SPACER GIF:
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td><img src="spacer.gif" width="100" height="10"></td>
</tr>
</table>
WITH SPACER GIF AND DIMENSIONS:
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="100">
<tr>
<td width="100" height="10"><img src="spacer.gif" width="100" height="10"></td>
</tr>
</table>
How do I use them with dimensions? Are there any email clients that still require spacer gifs? Is there any harm done either way?
It is advisable to take the help of HTML padding when you will not need to alter the spacing according to the different screen sizes. While padding is used to add spacing in a <td> cell, margin attribute goes well with <div> tags, when you want to add spacing to <div> elements. .
Line Breaks. Using the <br> tag is the simplest way to add space in the email content when coded using HTML in email. This method can be used only to create spacing between the texts in the copy of an email and hence it is not used much. <br> tag can be used before and after the content.
A spacer GIF is a small, transparent GIF image that is used in web design and HTML coding. They were used to control the visual layout of HTML elements on a web page, at a time when the HTML standard alone did not allow this.
To attach an image, you need to have the encoding scheme of the image you want to attach. This is the base64 string of the picture. You can get this by right-clicking on the image you want to attach, copy the image address, and paste it into the HTML text. The recipient will have a preview of when they open the email.
Personally, I never use spacer gifs, because they destroy the layout when image blocking is turned off, for three reasons:
To get around issue #2, you can save each image with its actual dimensions. However, this obviously increases:
and it doesn't solve issues #1 and #3.
The reason for using spacer gifs is because some clients (Outlook 2007, Outlook 2010, Lotus Notes, Hotmail / Live Mail) will not render an empty cell. It's very difficult to have absolute precision over dimensions of a text node, and so a spacer image suffices. However, even those clients mentioned will render an empty cell that has width defined.
So as long as you're defining pixel widths on any empty cells you are fine. To go back to the examples in the question:
Because of this, you should use dimensions and not spacer gifs.
Various articles talk about this question as well (search for 'spacer images' on the pages)
You can definitely avoid using spacer gifs.
I find that the following code works in all clients. I generally either specify the width or the height of these empty cells. This specific example is what I use to create vertical space:
<tr>
<td style="line-height: 0; font-size: 0;" height="10"> </td>
</tr>
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With