Embedded Images

One of the advantages of using HTML for a message body as opposed to plain text is the ability to embed images and other related content directly in the message. There are several ways to do this.

The first is to host the image yourself, and have the <img> tag refer to it on your system as shown below.

<img src="http://www.ff.com/images/logo.gif" alt="Fictional Financial Services Logo"/>

The obvious disadvantages are: 1. You have to host the image. 2. The image will only be displayed if the viewer is connected to the Internet.

The recommended method is to identify the images an "inline" content parts and refer to them by their content IDs.

The message body can be composed of multiple parts, but one of those parts must be HTML and parsable. Inside the body, refer to the image by its MIME content ID. Unfortunately, the MIME content ID of the graphic won't be known until the message is actually assembled; hence it has to be obtained through an ePriority tag.

<img src="cid:{{ContentID:logo.gif}}" >

The file attribute of the tag is matched against the filename attribute of the content tag in the instruction file whose display attribute is set to "inline" (display="inline"):

<content type="image/gif" filename="logo.gif" mfile="logo.gif" display="inline"/>

See the Service Overview Guide for an example.