Background Colors

Remember when we told you (above) about how browser-based email services (like
Yahoo!Mail and Hotmail) strip out your tags? That’s
what you need to remember when coding your background colors and images. You normally specify that stuff in your tag, but you can’t rely on that with HTML
email. You’ll need to create a big, 100% wide “table wrap” around your email. Set your
background color in that table, and use some CELLPADDING as needed. If you’re into
CSS, you might be tempted to use a div instead. But we’ve seen DIVs break quite
frequently in email applications, so we don’t recommend them.