Collapse unloaded image 'white space' on email templates

Question

Firstly, this might have been asked before but the generic terminology i'm associating with it makes it inherently difficult to research.

Quite a simple question:

When creating email templates (specifically in mailchimp) how can i force the white space of an unloaded image to collapse.

The idea here is that when the email is shown in an email client 'preview' (before images are accepted/download) the space that the images would occupy is shrunk, so as to allow as much of the text content as possible to be visible.

Examples as follows:

Image white space collapsed: http://oi58.tinypic.com/118gj7m.jpg

Image white space not collapsed: http://oi62.tinypic.com/rh28es.jpg

Your assistance would be kindly appreciated.

Answer 1

I'm not entirely sure, but after a quick look around it seems that the only ways to hide the image not found icon are methods that won't work, or won't work consistently, in emails.

The methods in the linked page require the use of javascript or css selectors, neither will work for a typical email client.

If you're finding that there is a significant lag in loading images, or waiting for the user to display images, consider changing your layout and reducing the file size of the images. Keep crucial content "above the fold": put important text in the top of the email so the user doesn't have to scroll past the images to see it.