Email Standards Project Blog

Microsoft responds to our call for standards support

2009-06-25T01:38:00+10:00

Firstly, I want to take this opportunity to express a sincere thanks to everyone for taking the time to spread the word about the fixoutlook.org campaign today. As we near 20,000 tweets, it’s been an overwhelmingly positive response.

It’s also been fantastic to see William Kennedy, Corporate Vice President of the Office team respond so quickly to the community on the Outlook team blog. There are some positives to take away from the post, as well as a number of issues I think need further clarification.

“We’ve made the decision to continue to use Word for creating e-mail messages because we believe it’s the best e-mail authoring experience around, with rich tools that our Word customers have enjoyed for over 25 years.”

As outlined in our original post, we are in no way advocating that Microsoft shift from using Word to create or render HTML emails. We’re asking that the HTML produced by the Word engine be standards compliant. This in turn will ensure that the engine will correctly render standards-based emails.

“Microsoft welcomes the development of broadly-adopted e-mail standards. We understand that e-mail is about interoperability among various e-mail programs...”

This is certainly music to our ears. The only problem is that “broadly adopted standards” already exist for HTML email. They are called web standards, and almost every email client on the market meets these standards. It doesn’t make sense to advocate a completely different set of standards to stipulate how HTML should be rendered in an email client as opposed to a web browser.

It’s important to remember the W3C’s CSS standard was created back in 1996. Not only that, but Outlook 2000 offered fantastic CSS support. The fact that software released 10 years later offers significantly less standards support does not reflect that Microsoft “understand that e-mail is about interoperability”.

If Microsoft is looking for a place to start, we’ve been advocating a list of recommendations the Outlook team should consider to meet an acceptable level of standards support since the release of Outlook 2007 two years ago.

“For e-mail viewing, Word also provides security benefits that are not available in a browser: Word cannot run web script or other active content that may threaten the security and safety of our customers.”

Every modern email client blocks scripting by default already. Our push for standards is not advocating support for anything other than the correct rendering of CSS. We agree that JavaScript has no place in an email client.

“The ‘Email Standards Project’ does not represent a sanctioned standard or an industry consensus in this area.”

Sanctioned or not, we’ve had a great partnership with companies like Apple and Yahoo! who have been more than happy to work with us in improving their support for web standards in their own email clients. As for consensus, surely 20,000 individuals sending a unified message in less than 24 hours is something at least worth your consideration.

If you’re interested in more coverage and discussion of this important issue, here is a great place to start.

Sour Outlook - zeldman.com

Users Pressure Microsoft to Fix Outlook - Reuters

Microsoft defends Outlook HTML decision - CNET News

Microsoft: Outlook’s not broken and we aren’t ‘fixing’ it - ZDNet.com

Outlook 2010 not winning fans. . .on Twitter - CNN.com

We’ll continue to keep you all in the loop as this develops, and you might also consider following our progress on Twitter at the just created twitter.com/fixoutlook.

Microsoft to ignore web standards in Outlook 2010 - enough is enough

2009-06-24T01:21:00+10:00

As most of you know, our motivation for starting the Email Standards Project two years ago came from the release of Outlook 2007. Specifically, because of Microsoft’s decision to avoid using a browser to render HTML emails in place of a word processor. This immediately took standards-based email design off the table, forcing designers to abandon web standards for tables and font tags. You can read our original reaction and the subsequent call to arms that followed.

Since that time, we’ve had the pleasure of working with teams at Yahoo!, Apple, IBM, Google and even the Microsoft Entourage team. However, the elephant in the room was always Outlook. For a time things were looking good and we had the chance to chat with a number of passionate Microsoft employees who agreed with our position on standards and to try their best to improve future versions of Outlook. I’m sad to say, it looks like these efforts failed.

After testing the latest beta of Outlook 2010 and seeing the same poor standards support as 2007, a senior member of the Outlook team confirmed they plan on continuing to use Word to render HTML emails. Not only that, but early tests indicate that HTML support in the Word engine has not been improved in any way. Same bugs. Same quirks.

To demonstrate just how bad the Word rendering engine is in Outlook 2010, here’s exactly the same email rendered in Outlook 2000, and then Outlook 2010. Click the image for a full sized version.

Microsoft explain their position

When Outlook 2007 was released there were lots of theories thrown around about what motivated the switch to the Word rendering engine. Many stipulated that it was a security related decision after the problems they’d been having with previous versions of Outlook. As it turns out, it was much simpler than that.

This was confirmed last week in a discussion with Outlook Product Manager Dev Balasubramanian. When asked why Outlook is using Word to compose HTML emails, this was his response:

“The reason for this lies in the benefit Outlook users gain by having Word as their e-mail authoring tool; rich tools like SmartArt, automatic styles and templates, and other benefits found in Word 2007 and 2010 enable Outlook users to write professional looking and visually stunning messages.”
“I am aware of where this decision on our part places Outlook from a standards perspective - at the same time, we ask that you consider the benefits Outlook users get from having Word tools in their e-mail authoring experience.”

When asked why Word is also used to render HTML emails, Dev explained:

“Having multiple HTML engines could reduce performance, as well as create an inconsistency in terms of what type of content the user is able to create vs. consume.”

Basically, Microsoft are using the Word rendering engine so emails composed in Outlook will look consistent when viewed by other Outlook users (also confirmed in this Microsoft white paper).

Email is not a walled garden

Microsoft’s decision to move away from the pre-2007 approach of using Internet Explorer to render emails clearly demonstrates they are not confident that emails composed using Word will render correctly in a web browser. Remember, for a second, that every other email client on the market today uses a web browser to render HTML email.

Surely Microsoft understand that if an Outlook 2010 user sends a Word formatted email to a friend using Apple Mail or Thunderbird and it’s unreadable, both sender and receiver suffer a poor experience. By aiming to please Outlook-to-Outlook senders, they are punishing Outlook customers who send to those using other email clients. Given the fact that Outlook 2007 only commands around 7% email client market share, it’s easy to see how short-sighted this is.

An obvious solution

To us, the solution couldn’t be more clear-cut. By updating the Word engine so it can compose and render standards based HTML, all of these problems are solved. Microsoft can have its pie and eat it too.

Outlook customers can receive email from outside sources without formatting problems. They can also rest assured that any emails they send to friends and colleagues not using Outlook will display as intended.

As the market upgrades from Outlook 2007 to 2010, HTML email design can move out of the pre-standards era of the 90’s bringing all the benefits that come with it.

Microsoft want your feedback on this decision

Outlook 2010 is still in beta and a year away from public release. Either we make it clear this is a bad decision now, or the disconnect between Outlook users and the rest of the email world will continue to grow. Email designers will be stuck building emails using the same clunky combination of tables for layout, inline CSS and font tags for many years to come.

Thankfully, Microsoft want to hear your feedback about this. From the Outlook Product Manager Dev Balasubramanian:

“The Office team, and Microsoft in general, is always open to and interested in customer feedback so we can prioritize the various needs of our diverse user base in product planning and development.”
“This conversation alone has reignited the topic within the Outlook and Word teams and in and of itself will contribute to future design considerations… We want to hear feedback on this position, and I’m sure you and your readers will provide it.”

It’s time for us to send the strongest message yet to Microsoft, and we need your help to get started. To make this happen, we’ve built fixoutlook.org.

All you have to do is tweet your thoughts about this issue, and make sure you include the fixoutlook.org URL somewhere in the tweet. We’ll be pulling together every tweet that includes this link on the fixoutlook.org site to send a unified message to Microsoft. The more tweets, the more impact, so please start spreading the word today and encourage your friends and colleagues to do the same.

To get started, head to fixoutlook.org for all the details.

Advice for designing emails right now

2009-03-31T02:55:00+10:00

The Email Standards Project is a future looking group. We’re working on improving current and future email clients so they render standard HTML and CSS more consistently. That’s the goal, but what about all of us who need to send emails out right now?

We’re often asked for advice on how to get the best results given the current state of the email client market. Here’s our top picks to get you started with building an email that will work well for your readers right now. You’ll notice they are from Campaign Monitor, which is built by the same team that started the Email Standards Project (full disclosure achieved!).

Which CSS styles can I use in my emails?

Our email ACID test doesn’t cover everything, and it is more focused on individual, current clients. For the bigger picture see the Guide to CSS support in email clients (2008).

You may notice some differences, where support is spotty for certain elements and we’ve tested in different ways. Watch out for an expanded ACID test later this year to provide more clarity.

What are the best practices for designing emails?

For general advice on what to put into your emails, what not to, and how to approach it see the Email design guidelines.

Are there tested email layouts I can use?

To save time in working out a structure that does not fall apart in one of the popular email clients, you can start with free, tested email templates that you can take, modify and reuse.

Which email clients are people actually using?

At Campaign Monitor we’ve been collecting statistics from millions of emails sent out, and compiled an email client popularity report (the unsurprising news is that Outlook still dominates).

Mobile email clients put to the test

2009-01-08T21:51:00+10:00

First there were desktop email clients, with their various differing capabilities. Then webmail clients became popular, making a free email address accessible to just about anyone. Today’s biggest growing area is mobile email clients on devices like the iPhone and Blackberry.

When you design and build an email you can’t know for sure which email client will be displaying it for any particular person. To find out the HTML and CSS rendering capabilities of mobile email clients, Gregg Oldring of Mailout Interactive took our email acid test and put it to work.

Gregg has posted his results on his blog and they are well worth checking out. He ran our acid test through a BlackBerry Bold, a BlackBerry Curve, a BlackBerry Pearl, an iPod Touch running the iPhone 2.1 Software Upgrade, an iPhone running 2.2 Software Upgrade, a Treo running Palm OS and a Treo running Windows.

Gregg’s results provide some interesting details - changes in rendering between iPhone software in 2.1 and 2.2 that actually break some parts of our test, for example. He also goes on to make a couple of suggestions for emailing to mobile clients, basically simplifying and reducing the width.

Make sure to click through and see the full mobile email results. Thanks Gregg for your work! If you’ve run your own tests, we’d love to hear about it, please comment below.

Email Standards Project in 2009

2009-01-05T22:29:00+10:00

Welcome to 2009! While most of us are enjoying the marvels and advances of the new millenium, HTML email rendering is still back in the 1990s, hanging out with structural tables and inline styles.

When we launched the Email Standards Project, we had a huge amount of support from people like you, web designers who were sick of having to deal with huge variations in the way their emails looked in the many different email clients. Although many people doubted that we could change things, we all felt something had to be done.

Since then, we have worked with worked with Yahoo! to improve their (already excellent) results, and talked to developers at Google about improving Gmail, and IBM about improving Lotus Notes.

It’s a slow process, but there is far more useful discussion of HTML email than there ever was before we started, and the signs are there for real change. We want to say thank you to all of you who have blogged about the project, contributed your own findings, spoken to contacts at email client developers, tweeted about us and more.

It is your efforts that have got us this far, and we’ll be relying on your help this year too. Here’s a quick outline of what we’ve got planned for 2009:

Updated, more detailed email client testing — We’re going to extend our testing to cover more elements and design techniques. We’ll also look at adding other popular email clients. However, we’re still not going to test older versions, only the ones which have a chance of being updated.
Projects to get attention from client developers — After our Gmail Grimaces got us in touch with a couple of Google engineers, we had lots of suggestions to do something similar for the Outlook team. We’ll search for ways to reach the right people.
Open conversation with email program providers — As far as possible, we want to open up the conversation between designers of HTML emails, and email client providers. If we can understand each other better, we have more chance of things progressing.

In broad terms, those are the things we’ll be focusing on. Of course, we’ll continue to keep you up to date with changes in the email rendering landscape through this blog. If you have any suggestions, requests or questions, please leave them in the comments. You can also join our Facebook group to keep up to date.

Let’s make 2009 a good year for HTML email designers!

Windows Live Mail Beta

2008-10-22T02:55:00+10:00

If you’re interested, you can grab the new beta by visiting the Windows Live blog. The new version of Windows Live Mail doesn’t seem to be any different in rendering our acid test compared to previous versions since most of the changes seem to be part of their Windows Live Suite. This is good news though since Windows Live Mail is actually a very decent mail application and we can only hope the rest of Microsoft’s mail teams are taking notes.

.net Magazine article published online

2008-09-15T22:52:00+10:00

Just a quick note to mention that my opinion piece in .net Magazine (as mentioned earlier) has now been published on the magazine site. We should see some more interest in the Email Standards Project from this!

.Mac becomes Mobile Me

2008-08-18T02:22:00+10:00

Thumbnail of the .Mac initial test

The much improved Mobile Me rendering

When we first tested .mac, it had a lot of problems. Our email ACID test did not render very well at all, and we ranked support overall as ‘Improvement Recommended’. This was slightly suprising given then excellent rendering abilities of the Mac desktop Mail client.

So after the release of the new Mobile Me, and after the associated outages and glitches, we were very keen to run the test again. The good news is that the results were dramatically improved. Nearly all of the previous problems had been corrected, and the email rendered almost perfectly.

Background colours and images are correct, positioning of elements works well, and even list images show up. The one oddity is what you can see in the thumbnail; headings. We found that while our H1 tag rendered perfectly, H2, H3 and below would not accept styling from a stylesheet in the head.

There’s no obvious explanation for why that would be the case, but during our testing and fiddling we were not able to get it to work at all. Lower level headings remained stubbornly unaffected by margins, background colors, padding and more.

Perhaps someone from the Mobile Me team can explain? Overall though, the rendering is hugely improved, and has earned an ‘Excellent’ rating. This is another great example of how webmail clients don’t need to render poorly.

Thanks to everyone who emailed us about Mobile Me, including Georg Stadler and Stefan Kremer who both sent in screengrabs.

View the full report for Mobile Me.

IBM to release Lotus Notes for iPhone

2008-08-11T00:34:00+10:00

Our testing with different versions of Lotus Notes has turned up mixed results so far, so we were interested to see that an iPhone version of the widely used software was in the works.

IBM has announced Lotus Notes for the iPhone will be released in 2008. According to the official site, it will “combine with the flexibility and connectivity of the Apple iPhone. To be built on the time tested IBM Lotus Domino Web Access infrastructure, users will be able to quickly access email, calendars, and contacts through the rich Apple iPhone user experience.”

The existing Apple Mail application built in to the iPhone does a very good job of rendering HTML and CSS, so we’ll be watching with interest to see how this new version of Notes does. If you have access to it, we’d love to hear from you once the product is released.

Want to test your own email client?

2008-08-05T21:52:00+10:00

We've tested the major market email clients with our acid test so far, the ones we get the most complaints and questions about. There are plenty of other email programs out there though, on the web and on desktops.

We've received a lot of requests for people to be able to test their own preferred email client, so here's your chance. Just add your email address (the one associated with the email client you want to test) to the list below, and we will send a copy of the ACID test to that address right away.

Please send me your email ACID test

We're always interested in hearing about email client support for HTML and CSS. In the future, we may well increase our official testing to include other clients too. Thanks again for your support of the Email Standards Project.

Yahoo! Mail acknowledges spacing issues

2008-06-19T23:35:00+10:00

We’ve posted about recent changes in paragraph spacing that many people have noticed in Yahoo! Mail. An update on the Yahoo! Mail blog confirms they are aware of some problems.

Just a quick update for those of you concerned about the spacing in HTML emails. Our engineers have sleuthed out the problem, and a fix will be rolling out in the coming weeks.

Thanks to the Yahoo! team for being open about these issues and for actively working on them — a model which other email client providers would do well to follow.

Novell Groupwise passes with flying colors

2008-05-23T03:03:00+10:00

Novell Groupwise is the third biggest player in the corporate email market behind Outlook Exchange and Notes. A while ago we heard from a Groupwise product manager at Novell, Alex Evans, who wanted to test against our email acid test. We sent Alex the email, and he soon had some great news for us.

Novell Groupwise, in it’s current version 7, renders the acid test perfectly, which puts it right up with Apple Mail and Yahoo Mail in terms of support for modern HTML and CSS.

This is for the Windows version of Groupwise. The excellent result also applies to the WebAccess version, and although the testing has not been completed, Linux and OSX version are also expected to meet the same levels.

Great job Novell team! We appreciate your efforts in building your product, and also in being prepared to test your client against our emails. We look forward to similar results for some other email clients in the not too distant future!

Yahoo! drops paragraph spacing

2008-05-20T03:10:00+10:00

Whereas emails sent to Yahoo! webmail subscribers in the past were appearing fine, recently it seemed like the rendering had changed. Paragraph spacing was now totally removed from many emails.

Diana ran some tests and was able to confirm that the spacing did disappear in both Yahoo! classic and the new version:

This is how paragraphs will now be spaced by default.

Fortunately, this is a simple one to fix. All you need to do is add a margin-bottom of 1em (either inline or in your stylesheet) and the spacing is back.

With the addition of a 1em margin, all is well.

It's unclear at this stage why the change has been made, but it is a timely reminder that you can't always rely on email client default settings - if it is important to your design, it's always best to explicitly apply styles to each element.

Thanks to everyone who reported this to us, and to Diana for doing the testing.

Outlook 2007 doesn’t show image borders

2008-04-22T00:20:01+10:00

When we heard from Carl that "Word/Outlook 2007 HTML rendering engine does NOT fully support border styles, despite the official documentation saying otherwise", we ran a quick test of our own. That test confirmed that border styles, either inline or in the head of a document, do not render in Outlook 2007.

Here is how it should look

This is how Outlook 2007 renders the same code

Now that we have at least made contact with Google, it looks like Microsoft should be next on the list! Your ideas and suggestions are welcome. We also love to hear from you when you discover rendering issues like these, because we like to keep our reports accurate. You can email hello at emailstandards.org or leave a comment below.

Gmail Appeal Update - We have contact!

2008-04-14T00:08:00+10:00

Only a few days after the release of our 2008 Gmail Appeal video, we have had some success!

Although in the initial launch of the Email Standards Project we did not hear from Google at all, last week we heard from a Google Engineer who (although we can't currently publish his name and details) is in a great position to investigate and perhaps make some improvements.

Thanks to the excellent 20% time offered to Google staff, a passionate engineer who has seen our video is going to use his time to explore what the situation is regarding Gmail's rendering, and how it might be improved.

Although 20% of one person's time might seem a small amount, it is a huge win that we have made contact with someone who has the right contacts and skills, and is willing to talk to us. Thanks go to everybody who took part in Project Gmail Grimace, and everyone who has promoted the Email Standards Project in any way.

We're really excited about this, and looking forward to some progress at some point in the future. Please leave a comment thanking our Google friend below!