Mozilla Thunderbird image in signature

Adding an image to you HTML signature in Thunderbird requires a slight HTML hackery. You need to locate the image on disk and add the IMG tag with the src attribute using the file URL of the image:

Linux:

<IMG src="file:///home/brian/.mozilla-thunderbird/image.jpg" alt="Cool"/>

Windows:

<IMG src="file://c:/foobar/image.jpg" alt="Cool"/>

11 Comments

  1. Thank you very much!
    I was trying for days to solve my “blank” image problem.

    Really thank you.

  2. Hamish:

    Any chance that anyone has the the appropriate code for adding an image in mac os 10.4??

  3. Ruth:

    Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I don’t know how many times I’ve asked advice on how to get my images to show. You’re a legend!

  4. [...] Mozilla Thunderbird image in signature [...]

  5. Tom:

    This can’t work. When the recipient gets the e-mail, his or her e-mail client will look on his local hard drive (because you’re referencing a local image, and it’s local to whomever) and not find it, displaying a blank image.

    If you post the image to the web, and then reference it like http://www.example.com/hello.jpg, then it should work fine.

  6. @Tom - It works because Thunderbird realizes that you are referencing a local image and includes it in the multipart MIME body of the email. It’s just a cool trick with Thunderbird and might not work with other email clients.

    Your solution will work as well, but in general you shouldn’t reference images external to the email itself. You really should attach all the images as part of the email message that you are using inside the HTML of the email message. This is the correct way to send HTML emails and will work with all email clients and also will prevent some clients from not rendering the images without the user clicking a button.

  7. Milly:

    I can’t get this to work. Signature looks perfect with embedded image, but Thunderbird won’t send it. It just keeps trying to attach the image for ever and never sends the email.
    I must have visited every forum & helpsite on the web by now, and all give more or less the same html lines for the signature file, so I really, really don’t understand why it’s not working.
    (neither with Ubuntu nor with Windows, both TB 2.0)

  8. Mitch:

    I can confirm Milly’s finding. If it works at all, at best it does not work very reliably on Thunderbird 2.x

  9. I’m having the same problem as Milly. IF I can get the image to work, Thunderbird just sits there and won’t send.

  10. Try putting the image on the root folder. I could only get it to work by using file://c:/image.jpg

  11. I had the problem too. Here is what worked for me: http://email.about.com/od/mozillathunderbirdtips/qt/et_tb_sig_image.htm

    Worked like a charm

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