Archive for the ‘Web’ Category
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
So here’s the great news that Outlook 2010 is in beta development. Here’s the not so great news. They are still planning on using the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails, just as in Outlook 2007.
Goodbye styles and background images, hello tables (my old friend) and broken emails.
There may be all sorts of reasons behind the move, be it a reaction to Microsoft not being allowed to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows 7 or the official Microsoft view that using Word offers the most powerful email composition tools for Outlook users. This is flawed by tha fact that recipients will require Outlook to view the emails properly, and with only 7% of the market this punishes Outlook users in my opinion. I see no reason why a corporation such as Microsoft can’t allocate the resources to create an email client that provides powerful authoring and rendering of emails, using email standards.
The Email Standards Project, Campaign Monitor (I love you guys!) and Newism have initiated a campaign, http://fixoutlook.org/, to try and highlight the problems to Microsoft, so lets all hope they listen.
Alternatively the sooner I get away from having to worry about building HTML emails, the better.
Addition: the Microsoft response
Microsoft have provided a response to the campaign on their MSDN blog which expands on a number of points I raised. In the comments I pointed out that HTML is not an email standard, and Microsoft correctly state “There is no widely-recognized consensus in the industry about what subset of HTML is appropriate for use in e-mail for interoperability“. This is my view too but of course it doesn’t make my day job any easier.
I agree that many using Word to compose rich emails will find that the easiest and most powerful method – but it still relies on the recipient using a client expecting Word formatted HTML.
Finally, if Microsoft would please prove to me that “Word has always done a great job of displaying the HTML which is commonly found in e-mails around the world” I’d appreciate it, because I think that is absolute bollocks and my professional experience backs that up.
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Category Computing, Web, Work | Tags: Tags: design, email clients, email marketing, HTML, microsoft, outlook 2007, outlook 2010, Work,
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
Future of Web Design over with for another year then and I have to say my first conference was an overwhelming success. Started well, with meeting @boagworld, @stanton, @ryanhavoc, @mikestickler, @anna_debenham, @nofont, @BHardcastle and @dkirk (twitter usernames of course) in the Prince of Teck at Earl’s Court, unfortunately had to bail to finish the current Virgin Insider build, but alas it was still fun. Except the getting stick for not having an iPhone, however after the next couple of days I definitely want one. I just upgraded on Orange. Bugger.
Molly Holzschlag on stage at FOWD 2009 - Flickr image from user: vectorfunk
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Friday, November 7th, 2008
Since my last blog I travelled by bicycle from London to Amsterdam to Brussels. I also started competitive triathlon. I was promoted. I found a few awesome web applications.
It might have been a few months since I blogged, as I was rebuilding my site from the ground up, however I recently decided to maintain WordPress as my blogging platform – so I can add blogs without having to re-build the databases later… leaving about 5 months of blogging to do.
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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
It has been a fun few weeks! Last week I went to see Velvet Revolver, the super group made up of members from Stone Temple Pilots, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Wasted Youth, and afterwards in the private bar met Slash and Scott Weiland. Both seemed bloody nice chaps, although Weiland appeared to be the only person in the UK allowed to smoke indoors at the gig. Now that’s power.
I was extremely disappointed that while writing this I found that Velvet Revolver have parted company with Scott Weiland, Slash citing his “increasingly erratic behaviour” as the reason! Well I never!
Slash was a bloody nice chap too. And my f**king God was he good on guitar! Unbelievable in fact.
The Friday after the gig was my first sponsorship deadline, which I just about reached, with the rest on its way. Great news – I am definitely cycling to Amsterdam and Brussels in June then!! Hoorah! Speaking of which I did my first training ride on Saturday – only 20 miles, but it’s a start. This weekend I will do 40 miles and then the following weekend I will try all the way to Deal to see mother and Grandad!
The final update is possibly the best bit – for me anyway. Up there with meeting Slash! I was in .net magazine! Now it was only readers sites, but the site Griff designed for www.challengebee.org, that I built over a couple of nights a few months ago is one of the sites featured on page 18. Nice screen shot, blurb that I wrote and picture of me and the Griff. I am proud! Next up is writing a decent article for the mag, which I am sure I could do!! I’ll scan and upload to this post asap! Probably tomorrow!
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Category 3 Capitals in 3 Days Cycle Challenge, Computing, Music, Web | Tags: Tags: .net, Charity, gigs, HTML, slash, Velvet Revolver, Web,
Thursday, March 6th, 2008
So just after receiving an email asking why a complicated HTML email didn’t work in Outlook 2007 and explaining that since it uses Word to render HTML it was never going to display everything right. Obviously some people just don’t understand this.
However with almost perfect timing I got an email from xBox Live (Microsoft run) with the disclaimer above shown right at the top! Yes, Microsoft themselves are suggesting you read the HTML email in a browser rather than their own email client!
“Read this issue online if you can’t see the images or are using Outlook 2007″
Now I accept that Microsoft may be correct in that HTML should not have been used for emails at all, emails should be plain text, end of. However if you are then going to support HTML partially, whilst using HTML emails in your own marketing, with a disclaimer against your own product, something is very wrong somewhere! Anyway, all the clients I work for won’t pay for plain text emails, therefore HTML emails kind of keep me in a job!
Anyway, I found this amusing, hope you do too.