Lotus Notes 6.5 and 7, unwanted space on small td's

Question

I'm testing an email and it is laid out correctly in all the clients except for Lotus notes 6.5 and 7.

The problem occurs when td's become very small (less than 10px). Those td's then do not get any smaller and end up with extra unwanted padding on either the bottom or the right.

Below is a screenshot of it happening to 1px wide images in Lotus notes 6.5. I've made this as an example of the strange layout occurring. As you can see (in the top left) the td's is set to the correct width (1px) and so is the image, however the td has some extra padding, about 12px, on the right of it. The extra space is highlighted in pink.

This also happens with 1px height image too, there is unwanted padding on the bottom.

The sample email's html is here: Demo Email

I would really appreciate some help with this, It's a bug I just can't seem to fix. If you find a solution I'll send you a muffin or something.

Answer 1

After loads of research, it turns out that lotus notes 6 and 7 can't display cells smaller than 12px. It's impossible.

Answer 2

The fact is that Lotus Notes' HTML rendering is far from standards-based. There is little documentation on it so your only hope is a lot of trial and error.

You might try using basic CSS instead of tables, or not putting each row of images in separate cells. But whatever you do, don't expect Lotus Notes email to behave like a real browser.