[screensaver400]

I'm sending a newsletter using a mass email system (activate direct). The header is a PNG with transparency. It works fine in everything but IE (and outlook, etc., I'd assume)

I'm not exactly sure why, but the only way I can get the transparency to work properly is with Microsoft's solution linked to below. The other javascript and php-based solutions provided by a Google search don't work. Obviously Microsoft's ActiveX based solution won't work at all in Safari, Firefox, etc.

What I need is a way to selectively display the image in a normal way when the browser is Safari, Firefox, etc., but to use the ActiveX method when IE is detected. Is there a way to do this?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294714

[Brad]

What version of IE? Ah, mass email.

IE6 simply doesn't support normal PNG transparency without running the AlphaImageLoader script mentioned in the page you linked to. That's one of the many reasons IE6 sucks. There's no way around this, I'm afraid.

IE7, on the other hand, should handle embedded PNG images with alpha just fine without any special code.

You could use this script in your code: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/ This only runs if the browser is IE 5.5 or 6.

[screensaver400]

Ah, but that requires Javascript. Any email client that supports Javascript (already a fairly tall order, because of security concerns) ought to have it locked down, no?

I'm asking for a bit of a miracle, I know.

This option works in the Activate Direct (my web based mass email system) preview areas. Any php or javascript methods work in neither the email reader nor the activate direct preview window. However, this non-Javascript method doesn't seem to work in the Gmail web interface, although I've yet to try Outlook. If it doesn't work in Gmail web interface (on IE6, that is), it's still fairly worthless to me.