Email Stationary
When you write a letter you normally do so on plain white paper.
You can however use your own special stationary. Most companies
use company stationary, which contains their company logo and
contact details.
With email we normally send our email on a plain white
background, but like in the paper world we can use our own
personal email stationary. Most major email clients have the
ability to use Email stationary and many have a collection of
default stationary.
Most stationary uses HTML. HTML is the language used to create
web pages, and therefore email stationary is basically a web
page. Because it is the same as a web page it can contain the
same elements as a standard web page, hence it can contain
images, backgrounds, coloured and unique fonts, and even sound.
Because it is the same as a web page you can even create it
using a web page editor. There are however custom tools
available and some email clients like outlook express even have the stationary
creation tools built in.
The stationary serves as a template for your email and allows
you to send attractive email, and even animated and talking
email. You need to be very careful when using stationary as it
is very easy to send unreadable emails because of a bad choice
of background.
The main problem with using stationary is that because it is an
HTML page the email client that receives it must be capable of
receiving HTML email. Although most email clients are capable,
some have the ability disabled as a security precaution.
Therefore it is a good idea not to rely solely on your
stationary to provide the recipient with important contact
details, in case they don't get them. So although it could be
used in place of a standard signature file I would use it to
augment the signature file rather than replace it.