A scroll will be stopped by a powerful image. A picture on its alone won't create a reader book. A reader of a travel email needs to be moved from interest to action. That requires a swift load time, ...

yep, that's my question. can I just create any .html file with html/css/pictures/links, and insert the code into an email using an email client (in my case, Apple's Mail.app on MacOS X Tiger 10.4), ...

When replying to or forwarding emails originally sent in plain text or Rich Text Format (RTF), Outlook downgrades your HTML signature to match the simpler format. It also occurs when forwarding ...