Basic HTML for AOL Mail

You can organize your content in a tabular format with HTML.

AOL is one of several providers that allows the use of hypertext markup language, or HTML, in your email messages and signatures. You can format your messages with HTML codes to make them easier to read, appear more like a newsletter or even to provide links to your website in your signature. Use basic HTML codes to accomplish this -- you can also save them as a template to quickly reference and re-use in the future.

Fonts

There are a number of modifications you can make to the text of your email with HTML, all using the "<font>" tag. Whether you wish to change your font face, color, size or all three, you can do so with a single line of code. Furthermore, you can use this tag several times to individually modify different parts of your text. In the following example, the sample text appears red in the Verdana font as size 3, which is typically larger than the default text:

<font face="verdana" color="red" size"3">Sample Text</font>

Note that while you can specify any font face, your readers will only be able to see special fonts if they are installed on their computers.

Links

Links are an easy way to direct your readers to interesting websites or your own websites, or provide a contact email address. When you use anchor tags to create links, your recipients can quickly click the link, rather than copying and pasting it, to open it in their browsers. The following is a basic link to a website; change the destination URL and anchor text to your preference:

<a href="http://google.com">Google</a>

You can also use anchors to link to an email address. For a basic email address, use the following syntax, where "email" is the actual email address and "text" is the descriptive text or the name of the address's owner.

<a href="mailto:email">Text</a>

You can further improve upon the basic email anchor by adding a subject -- which your recipient can change when composing a new message -- as in the following example:

<a href="mailto:email?Subject=Hi">Text</a>

Change "Hi" to any subject, but make sure that the question and quotation marks remain intact.

Additional Tags

Several HTML tags that you may want to know when crafting an email apply to text formatting. For example, wrap text in the "<strong>" tag to create bold text, or use "<em"> for italic text. You can also use "<del>" for text that is struck out or "<u>" for unlined text. Simply swap out the tags from this code example:

<strong>Text</strong>

You can also insert an image that is uploaded to the Internet, using a simple syntax:

<img src="Image URL">

Insert the actual image URL rather than the placeholder text.

Tables

Tables arrange your content into a grid with rows and columns. These rows and columns intersect in what are known as cells. The code for a table is more complex than the code for changing fonts or creating links, and requires you to close elements in the proper order. To create a simple table, with two rows and columns each, use the following code:

<table>
<tr>
<td>Cell 1</td>
<td>Cell 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cell 3</td>
<td>Cell 4</td>
</tr>
</table>

The "<tr>" tags mark the beginning of each row. Rather than specifying columns, use "<td>" to create a new cell, which automatically denotes a new column. In the example, "Cell 1" appears on the top left, "Cell 2" on the top right, "Cell 3" on the bottom left and "Cell 4" on the bottom right.

References

• Your HTML Source: Basic Links
• PageResource.com: Beginning HTML Tutorial
• HTML Basic Tutor: Email Subject Line
• W3Schools: HTML Basic Document
• AOL Postmaster: Technical and Policy Requirements for Sending Email to AOL