A previous MUO article explains how to use Apple's iWeb to Build A Quick, Easy & Beautiful Website. But if an entire website is not what you need, you can still make use of the easy drag-and -drop tools of iWeb and Apple's mail to create a custom HTML email announcement for say an upcoming wedding, house party, or business product and service.

This article will explain first how to use Apple's free Mail Stationery to send out an HTML announcement on the fly. Next, it will explain how to customize a single iWeb page and embed it in an email.

Apple Stationery

Apple's free Stationery templates are a great way to send out graphic emails on the fly.

After you select File>New Message, select the Show Stationery button on the right side of the email toolbar. ï»¿

html announcement

The drop-down box will reveal well over a hundred graphic email templates from which you can select from. Clicking on one of them will fill the content of your email message. If you don't like what you chose, you can simply click another one to replace it.

html announcement

Click on the Photo Browser in the toolbar to access photos from your iPhoto library or you can drag a photo from your Finder into the image holder of a Stationery template.

iWeb Method

To create a similar HTML email, familiarize yourself with the basics of using iWeb, by reading this MUO how-to article.

iWeb offers several dozen templates for website creation, but for our purposes we're only going to use a single page for our email announcement.

Step 1

First, go to File>New Site. Next, choose a template you would like for your announcement.

web announcements

Before you click the Choose button, select one of the pages for your announcement in the main window. For our purposes you will want to choose either the Welcome, About page, or Blank template.

Step 2

Now, open the iWeb Inspector (View>Show Inspector) and click on the Page icon. Deselect the two boxes, because you don't need the navigation menus for your page.

web announcements

Customize the content of the template. Include information and images that you want to send out in your email message.

web announcements

If you'd rather not give Apple free advertising, you can click on the Apple icon at the button of the page and delete it.

create an announcement

After you save your page, publish it to your MobileMe or other web server account.

Step 3

To embed your announcement into an email, download the page where the announcement is posted, and select in Safari, File>Mail Contents of This Page. This will open your announcement in a new Mail message, which you can then send to one or more recipients.

create an announcement

Note: I found a few iWeb templates where the photos did not download when the webpage content was embedded in the mail message. So be ready to change your template if you run into this problem.

Let us know if using Mail and iWorks this way works for you. Also, let us know if there has been times when Mail Stationery did not download properly in an email client. I have found that works fine in most popular mail clients.