AMPScript: trying to insert hidden fields - html

I'm working on some email that will be deployed via Exact Target. We have a lot of AMPScript dictating what is going on within the email(s). The content blocks of the email are dynamically filled, and when a field is left empty there is still a call made to that table section, which then inserts a blank space on the email. Thus throwing the design out of whack.
My question is, is there anyway I can have those empty cells completely removed from the page when not in use?
here is the code sample ...
Set #SendLog_blockC1 = lookup("RaceDataSendLog","BLK_C1","SubID",#SubLookup,"JobID",#JobLookup,"BatchID",#BatchLookup)
...
...
...
Set #blockC1 = Concat("My Contents\Newsletter\",#SendLog_blockC1)
....
....
....
....
%%[IF empty(#blockC1) THEN]%%
%%[ELSE]%%
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top" >
%%=ContentAreaByName(#blockC1,"",0)=%%
</td>
</tr>
%%[ENDIF]%%
Thank you in advance.

On the assumption you're referring to that space above your ELSE - this should work:
<!--%%[
IF empty(#blockC1) THEN
ELSE]%%-->
<tr>
<td align="left" valign="top" >
%%=ContentAreaByName(#blockC1,"",0)=%%
</td>
</tr>
<!--%%[ENDIF]%%-->
This will hide the AMPscript in the HTML, in addition - you don't really need the IF to produce the space, you can just have the ELSE right after it.

and thank you for your responses. I was finally able to resolve the issue of the extra spacing.
What I did was remove the <tr> and <td> tags from around the if/else statements. I then placed those <tr> and <td> tags around the content blocks that are brought in by the PM's when they decide which blocks to use. This solved the problem of the extra spacing. Client is happy!!!
Thanks again guys!!!

Related

Can't Center Text For Newsletter In Mobile

Working on an email blast and for the life of me I cannot get the text to center in mobile view. The URL is: http://strictpixel.com/clients/relevant/fbc/email/
I am referencing the top navigation, under the logo. In mobile, it slides to the left and I am not sure why.
I know this is something simple but I have been pulling my hair out for an hour.
Thanks!
Yeah that really is a mess and you should consider refactoring. There's no way you need all those nested tables.
However, if you plan to keep it this way, the problem is likely stemming from your HTML being invalid. First, the <center> tag is dead and should not be used. Second, you break the flow of your table structure beginning after the comment I inserted below:
<p class="template-label">469-952-6404</p></td>
<td class="expander"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
<!-- You can't start the new table below here without first either
opening a new <td> or closing the <tr> and <table> that is open!! -->
<table class="container">
<tr>
<td class="wrapper">
<table class="twelve columns" style="background-color:#f1f5f8;vertical-align:center;">
...
My best guess is that you missed opening up the next <td> tag just before that table begins.
Use an online HTML validator to help you find where your table structure is broken. Something like http://www.freeformatter.com/html-validator.html may prove useful.

Phantom Showing up in my page

I have a page written in HTML/ASP that has a series of nested tables that I use for formatting the page the way I want it.
When the page loads however there is a white space between the two tables that is not in the code and when I inspect it in chrome it shows the code has a &nbsp character between them.
Why is this appearing in the page when it loads but it is not in the script? How can I remove it?
<table width=100% border=2 cellpadding=0>
<tr>
<table width=100%>
<tr>
<th width=10% align="right">Destination:</th>
<td width=60%>Here</td>
<td width=10% align="right">Date:</td>
<td width=20% align="left"> <%=FormatDateTime(d,2)%></td>
</tr>
</table>
</tr>
<tr>
<table width = 100%>
<tr>
<td width=2%> </td>
<td align="right">Time1:</td>
<td align="center"><%=formatTime(oRS1("time"))%></td>
<td><%=oRS1("location")%></td>
<td width=40> </td>
<td align="right">Driver</td>
<td> <%=fpn%></td>
</tr>
<tr>
</table>
I just had this same issue and here are the steps that I tried that eventually fixed it:
Cleared the cache in the browser
Cleared all browser data
Tried a different browser
None of the above worked in my case, and the phantom was not in my code (and I triple checked it!!!!), but it was obviously somewhere since it was showing in the console and other browsers:
So, (and this may not be the best way to solve this but it worked) as you can see from my console output, I added two paragraph tags above and two below (by carefully putting the cursor in front of the next element and using a carriage return and the arrow key to go back up) to get the phantom in the middle. After that I saved it, then proceeded to select and delete the two paragraph tags in the middle together (with the phantom between them). This is what finally worked, the delete of both the elements surrounding it together took the phantom with it...
Perhaps some small part of my html page became corrupted? Who knows... but if anyone else is having this issue, give this a try.

Automatic email with HTML formatting

I've been trying to figure out if its possible for me to set an automatic reply that sends out an HTML formatted email. I need this to send out a fancy looking "We'll get back to you shortly" with images and links. I have the HTML code with me (with all headers and inline CSS), but I have no way to format the body of the email response as HTML.
Any ideas on how I can get this done?
I'm using Outlook Web App.
Thanks
You can use a library like swiftmailer http://swiftmailer.org/
Open up your text editor and get ready to start using tables. You're going to want to start out with something like this.
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td>
<table width="650" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<!-- the amount of td you need -->
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Of course you'll need to figure out the exact layout, but expect to do a lot of table nesting. There are also issues between different email clients concerning how it all renders. Make sure if you're making an empty table cell used for spacing, make sure to do something like this.
<td style="height: 10px; font-size: 0; line-height: 0;">&nsbp;</td>
Otherwise you'll get unexpected spaces in things like Outlook.
Campaign monitor has a lot of useful tips about building out emails, check it out here.

HTML/CSS table display problems

I'm messing around with the aesthetics of a site I'm building and have been left scratching my head on something that looks like it should be simple, or so I thought.
I am using a table to place the content of my the site into, and when I run it through my local host (Using XAMP) the scale of table <td> tags is how I want it, but when I host it through my godaddy account the <td>s in my main content <tr> are scaled differently (seems to be influenced by the header row).
Here's the link to my current page and you'll see the problem. (BTW the site is not finished so any spelling mistakes and stuff like that feel free to ignore :))
http://www.sittingducksfc.co.uk/
So how would I go about creating evenly sized <td>'s within that row? as you can see the furthest right <td> is squashed to the same scale as the loginbox at the top. I have been fiddling with it for a while but I'm probably missing some simple css but I haven't found any previous question with the same problem.
Regards
Mike
So the problem appears to by your stylesheet... You have the three <td> which all have the width of 33%
I am using Google Chrome 31.0.1650.63m and it shows up fine but other browsers may not, i would suggest to do the following change
<td colspan="1" style="background-color:white;text-align:center;width: 30%;height:30%;">
I would also suggest using a stylesheet as opposed to editing the style in-line
Hi all thanks for your responses.
From trail and error i have gone for a different approach and stacked multiple tables into my main div and that allows me to specify the particular widths of each td within that particular table.
From further investigation it can also be seen
here and i apologize for a repeat question.
Here is my example code.
<div>
<table width="100%" height="100%" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="10">
<tr>
<td width="80%"></td>
<td width="20%"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table width="100%" height="100%" border="0" cellspacing="10" cellpadding="10">
<tr>
<td width="33%"></td>
<td width="34%"></td>
<td width="33%"></td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
This can be stacked many times without each table affecting the other.

Newsletter layout crashes with Gmail

I've actually created a template on Mailchimp. I used a basic template of Mailchimp and transformed it into the design they gave me. I used the the CSS inline tool of Mailchimp to insert all the code in an inline mode as Gmail does not accept any style on the header. I only have this issue on Gmail, the rest work perfectly. What can I do?
As the code is long I inserted it in a fiddle if you wish to check it out:
http://jsfiddle.net/z27Bw/
I need an answer as its a mystery for me!
You have 2 unclosed <td> tags in the HTML -- one on line 476, one on 482. That might be what's causing the issue in Gmail. If that doesn't fix it, I'd say yeah, it might be a colspan issue.
you can try this
Write first tr code like this
<tr>
<td colspan="2" height="281"> </td>
</tr>
instead of
<tr>
<td width="35" height="281"> </td>
<td class="headerContent"> </td>
</tr
>
and then put that big header image inside it.