For all those unfortunate developers who are trying to get emails and email newsletters to work on iPhone Mail and other useless Apple devices, I sympathise with you.

After several hours of trial and error, I have discovered the following; which I hope will save others some time to figure the problems arising from iPhone compatibility.

(1) In an email newsletter or email communication  – you MUST always use the full image path.

WORKS:-

<a href=”http://xxxxxx.com/” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.hkgant.com/xxxx/xxx.jpg” border=0 /></a>

DOESN’T WORK:-

<a href=”http://xxxxxx.com/” target=”_blank”><img src=”./xxx.jpg” border=0 /></a>

Links will not work properly in the second one and instead of linking properly you get a screen with icons of “Mail”, “Twitter”, “Facebook”, “Weibo”, “Assign to Contact”, etc. which is rubbish.

(2) Map links on iPhones

Don’t even think about it; it doesn’t even work on Apple Mail. It will however work on all other email browsers.

<map rect=”x,y,x1,y1″ etc.> will not work.

The hyperlinking problem only occurs with embedded images; if the images are pulled from online then this wouldn’t occur.

17 July 2013
Wang Keping