From: Dr. Beau Webber [J_dot_B_dot_W_dot_Webber_at_kent_dot_ac_dot_uk]
Sent: 26 April 2006 15:29
Subject: RE: images - emailing efficient formatted announcements with photos, posters and flyers

Bands and organisers of events go to some trouble to produce good looking emails with photos, and posters and flyers describing  events.
However these frequently require a vast amount of web space and transmission bandwidth compared with simple text announcements.
 
Thus it has frequently been the practice of organisations that forward such emails, such as SEFAN, to strip out photos and attachments so as not to swamp some users with too much data. Similarly KentFolk has mainly posted text on the News web pages, as each attachment or photo has to be handled individually and converted for the web, and photos frequently have to be resized for the web. 
 
There is a simple answer to this problem - rather than embedding photos or sending photos, posters and flyers as attachments, to just include a link to the photo, poster or flyer on the web.
Two examples :
Embedded picture                                            Pointer to picture on web
  - this takes up space on everyones machine           - this is just a line of text ...
       
 
 
 
How does one include pictures in ones' emails this way ?
 
Well one problem is that one has to have at least one copy of the picture/poster/flyer on the web somewhere - this then saves everyone else having to keep a copy - for how many people is this a problem, that can not upload to the web anywhere ? (Google Page will give everyone 100MByte of free space to do this, but it has not quite reached the UK).
 
The picture/poster/flyer does not have to be embedded in an html document (though it can be, see below).
 
When one directly embeds a picure in one's email, one includes a picture from ones hard drive, say :
       ./Images/pic1.jpg 
This image gets encoded and embedded into the email, which has a pointer to it in the appropriate place that looks something like :
    src="cid:692025308_at_09042006-0eef"
 
Thus one way to re-point to a  picture/poster/flyer on the web is just to do a search and replace on the src entry in one's email text,
so for an image at :
         http://www.someband.com/pastgigs/pic5.jpg 
the src line becomes
        src=" http://www.someband.com/pastgigs/pic5.jpg"
 
However  the easy way to do this is just use ones email editor to "insert picture",  and then instead of browsing to an image on ones hard disk one just pastes into the "Picture Source" box the URL :  http://www.someband.com/pastgigs/pic5.jpg.
 
Job done, the email is only a few 10s of bytes larger, not many kByte, yet still has the picture.
 
Suppose the image is already on the web, one knows  http://www.someband.com/pastgigs/  but not the name of the .jpg ?
(I am assuming you have permission to use the picture.)
One way to find the name of the image is to right click on it and chose properties,  where one can copy and then paste the address (URL).
 
Are there any other differences ? - This way the reader of the email can choose just to read the text, or to download the picture over the web and see the email in its full glory ... and KentFolk and other web pages can easily display the email with pictures on the web.
 
I hope this makes sense,
    cheers,
    Beau Webber
    www.kentfolk.com   
 
 
 


From: SEFAN [mailto:admin_at_sefan_dot_org_dot_uk]
Sent: 25 April 2006 10:27
Subject: images

Hi Beau,

I'd agree that links to images are going to be the best way to put
images or whole fliers into an email. Perhaps you could write
a paragraph or two on how to send efficient formatted announcements and
we'll put it on our web site as one of our "How To" sheets.

Thanks for thinking of this, it hadn't occured to me. 
 
AJ


 
Penny, Anthony,
can you recommend a better route, what are your thoughts ?
 
......
 thanks again,
    cheers,
        Beau Webber

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anthony John Allen - Chair of the board
Penny Allen  -    General Manager
Sarah Leverton / Ben Schwausch (youth project placements)

South East Folk Arts Network:
             admin_at_sefan_dot_org_dot_uk                   www.sefan.org.uk
Registered Charity in England and Wales, No: 1111883
Company Limited by Guarantee No: 5114495

89 Hollingbury Park Avenue, Brighton,  BN1 7JQ
Tel.  +44 (0)1273 541453
Fax. +44 (0)1273 554189