In the Outlook Express window, use 'Messages' menu and select New Message Using/Select Stationery.
This is a walk through for using the Outlook Express Stationery Wizard
for setting your background up as OE Stationery. It's quite simple
for all to use. Create your background and save it to your
C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Stationery folder.
If your background has a side border, get a general idea of how many pixels
it takes to clear the border.
Step 1
In the Outlook Express window, use 'Messages' menu and select New Message
Using/Select Stationery.
Step 2
In your stationery selection window, click on the 'Create New' button.
Step 3
This is the Stationery Wizard main window, click 'Next' button.
Step 4
In the Background window, the first think you do is select the background
you saved prior to step 1.
Step 5
You also have a choice of where and how you want to position the background,
I've not found a use for these yet; so next is the tile direction and then
where you can change the main background color. Notice the sample
widow!
Step 6
For side border stationery, you want it to tile vertically, so you
click the down arrow and select Vertically. For a top border, you
would want to select the Horizontally, for a tile, you would select Entire
Page. You can change the background color in the same manor but since
Microsoft only allows you the basic 16 color choices, I don't bother!
I do it is the edit window.
Step 7
Click the 'Next' button. WIll now shorten the number of pics
- you get the general idea! Notice the sample window!
Step 8
In the Font window, select your font ;
Step 9
Set your font size and again, you can select your font color here,
but since Microsoft only allows you the basic 16 color choices, I don't
bother - I do it in the 'Edit' window - click the 'Next' button.
Notice the sample window!
Step 10
Setting your margins is easy, I told you to get an idea of how
many pixels to clear the border; if you did that you have a general
idea of what to set it to - if not, just start playing around with it until
your sample text in the sample window! You can also set the top margin
but I seldom have a reason to do that.
Step 11
in the 'Complete' window, give your stationery a name and then click
on the 'Finish' button. I keep the name of the stationery equal to
the name of the image so they will be together in the stationery folder
if I ever want to delete them. And, LOL, I always delete the
crappy stationery Microsoft offered and all of their graphics. The
only thing I leave in there is the 'blank.html' before adding all of my
own, I'm not suggesting you do that - but I do!
Step 12
You are now back at the Stationery selection window with your new stationery
selected. Notice the sample Window!
I mentioned earlier that I make my color changes in the edit - but,
but, but; this is your actual HTML code! Click on the 'Edit'
button and take a look even if you aren't ready to do this because you
can make changes for any stationery you have selection when you click on
the 'Edit' button.
Step 13
This is your stationery code.
HTML tags tell browsers this is a page. there are two:, the opening
<HTML> and the closing </HTML> (that which is opened, must be closed!)
HEAD tags is where your page conditions are put; has opening
and closing.
STYLE tags are where you set styles in web pages; this is where
OE sets the fonts, margins and positioning for it's stationery. It
is defined as BODY because that the section that the STYLE is for.
You can change the font family by opening a font list in something
and seeing what the exact case, spelling and spacing is and then replacing
the part just before the semi-colon. Semi-colon is a MUST!
You can change the font size by replacing the numbers before the "pt"
- pt;" is a MUST and no spaces between the number and it.
You can change the color by changing the numbers; you know you
can get the numbers for your color choice in PSP and you can copy JUST
THE NUMBERS; NOT the # sign - and enter them here.
You can change the margins if you need to later or now and the background
positioning.
BODY section comes after the closing tag of HEAD. The BODY tag
defines the name of the stationery. There are two BODY tags and this
is where all of your messages will be stored when you use your stationery.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE CODE HAS TO
BE AS IS (BRACES, BRACKETS, COLONS, SEMI--COLONS and so on.
I have highlighted the things to change. PLEASE!
Please, do not change anything else unless you know what they do.
It could render you page useless - then you would have to go into the stationery
folder and delete the file and start over. When you're done, you
click the 'X' to close the window - it will ask if you want to save the
changes.
Step 14
Now you are back at the stationery selection and you can click on the
'OK' button to see the results.
New message will open with your new stationery.
Close Window when Finished.
Zipped tutorial in pdf format is a 623KB download.
tutorial by CSGreen