Embedding photos, graphics, format

Question

I want to send an online newsletter. I know I can drag photos and put them where I want them. What about a masthead, logo, or other graphic? If I also use larger fonts and employ styles, will both Mac and Windows receivers see it just as I send it, or will the formatting get all messed up with photos only in attachments?

Answer 1

James,
Mail's templates should suffice, provided they give you all the formatting options you want. Keep in mind, though, that HTML carries no guarantee that everybody will see exactly what you want them to see. Clients differ, settings made by a particular user within a given client might differ, and give up expecting any Microsoft product to comply with what are supposed to be standard web protocols.
Your best policy on this might be to just go ahead and publish the first newsletter using templates, and ask for feedback from the readers. This will tell you pretty quickly how everyone is seeing your compositions.
As I have already stated, the PDF format is about the only fool-proof method of getting your content across to absolutely everyone, just as you compose it. That's what it is for. If it is being emailed, it will appear within most clients as an attachment, not "in line." Mail, however, is a notable exception. Anyone using OS X and Mail will see it right in the body of the email. In other words, you need to convince everyone to switch to an Apple computer running OS X, and to use Mail.
If you do go with PDFs, it won't matter what application you use to compose. Just use "Save as PDF..." from the print dialogue when you have it completed. The result will be compatible with any reader. In any case, you wouldn't want to attach anything other than a PDF. A word document, for example, might be considered a pretty universally accessible format, but it will open as a word processing document, and might not contain all of your own formatting, and it might not even be seen with the same fonts, etc. In fact, it probably won't be in most cases.
Now, getting back to Stationery..... If you find that emails you send as Stationery come off pretty well, you can begin to explore the possibilities. The Stationery templates are just simple HTML documents, bundled up in a "package" with all of the contents. If you have some knowledge of HTML, you can make copies of these packages, then modify the contents of the copies to create your own templates. This might be way too technical for your taste, but it does bring to mind another idea.
Have you considered publishing the newsletter online? Do you have a MobileMe account? If so, you could simply publish your newsletter in iWeb, then send out an email with an imbedded link. This might be the best way to publish, since you would have much more flexibility in the composition, and much more surety of it being seen just as you compose it. If I were in your shoes, this is exactly what I would be doing.
Scott