Seeking: Online Email Preview Tool
Have you ever noticed how many email clients block images and display the alternative text? I’m curious if anyone has actually seen this emulated utilizing JavaScript or Server-side scripting. I’d like to get a hand on a tool that does it. Over time, I’m sure that I can develop such a page… I actually started playing tonight. Here’s a function that removes all of your images on a page:
function replace() //remove images
{
var imgs = document.getElementsByTagName('img'); //array
for (var i=0;i<imgs.length;i++) //loop
{
imgs[i].src = ""; //set the images to nothing
}
}
It’s pretty simple Javascript. The first thing I do is collect an array of the images in HTML. An array is a group of items. I told the javascript to get every element that has an img tag. (That’s how you display images in HTML). Next I ‘loop’ through the array by telling it to start with the first item (=0), go for as many items there are (imgs.length), and when it’s done with the loop add 1 to move to the next item (i++).
What basically happens is that the array collects the location of every image on the page, loops through them, and sets each to nothing. What I’d really like to do with this is remove the image but actually display any alternative text – just like an email client would. I’d also love to remove other table and div elements to render it as it would look in many Mobile Clients. This would replace inline style tag and font formatting.
Has anyone seen or built anything like this? If so, drop me a note in my contact form. If it’s written in C# or especially JavaScript, it may even be something I could be authorized to purchase. The advantage of JavaScript is that it could be turned off and on dynamically – a really nice feature! Meanwhile, I’ll continue working on it myself!
