Comments on: Putting the Outlook 2010 HTML issue in perspective

By: John Geek

John Geek — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:35:19 +0000

Looking at one set of statistcs (I realize it is very easy to make up numbers when trying to determine marketshare of Internet related clients) shows that Outlook 2000, 2003, 2007 and Outlook Express make up almost 40% of the email clients in use (as of June 2009). Yahoo, HoTMaiL and Gmail make up about 37%. There are problems with interpretation of email across most of these platforms. To sit there as developers and say the email clients being used by upwards of 80% of your clients are wrong is just silly. You have to deal with it and move on with life.

For those who think we should be using plain text, you also need to get with reality. As a corporate email administrator, I do not want to force my users to use Word to create “nice looking” messages and then put them as an attachment to a plain text email.

Microsoft has made significant improvements in support of standards. Just take a look at Exchange 2010 and its browser support–it now works on Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Of course, Microsoft has a long ways to go and we, as their customers, should continue to push them to improve support.

For those who must have pure HTML email content, simply go to Other Actions and select View in Browser. I agree, poor solution, but if you must.

This was an excellent summary of the issue. I appreciate it.

By: CPast

CPast — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:29:16 +0000

300 people is not very many. *At all*. As in, a single airliner holds more than that.

By: Email Support For Best Email Management | Web & online Software Development

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:54:06 +0000

[...] Putting the Outlook 2010 HTML issue in perspective (istartedsomething.com) [...]

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Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:40:33 +0000

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By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:29:11 +0000

What’s really troublesome is that they A. didn’t actually get the message, and B. in the face of 300 comments decided to close comments.

What kind of message does that send? I interpret it like this

Microsoft: Ah, we don’t really understand the ahmm, the question, but we do have some marketing materials here that we can talk about.
Developers: NO, this is the issue, and 300 people concur.
Microsoft: Ahm, yes, this does not resemble our marketing material, thanks for the comments, now go away.

And then…. silence.

No, not good at all.

By: Allen Huang

Allen Huang — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:34:37 +0000

@ Long Zheng,
It’s a pleasure mate! :]

By: Long Zheng

Long Zheng — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:01:22 +0000

@Allen Huang: Thanks for the update and screenshot Allen. Appreciate it!

By: Allen Huang

Allen Huang — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:17:49 +0000

@Long Zheng:
I just did the ACID Test, and in my GMAIL, the message looked IDENTICAL to the reference rendering!
You can’t just post the screenshot provided from ESP… (they last updated their GMAIL result in 28NOV2007!)

HELLO! it’s 2009!
look at my screenshot of GMAIL’s Rendering.. it looks 100% perfect!
CLICK

PS. PLEASE update this article!

@”confused”: You’re right, GMAIL HAS improved a LOT over the past few years… It’s definitely the leading webmail client (in both features AND Rendering!)

Personally I do not like using a Local Email Client – Web based Emails are much more accessible and faster (in my opinion) – it also doesnt take up unnecessary disk space.

By: Confused

Confused — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:27:02 +0000

I’m confused.

I send out professional emails every day to between 300,000 and 500,000 subscribers.
Gmail gives me the least trouble by far. If it ever has problems there are things I can do to fix it.

Outlook on the other hand has no alternatives. You can’t fix bits of code as Outlook will just ignore alot of code.
I don’t think any protests will ever get Microsoft to really change anything with Outlook. They don’t care.
Time will take care of these issues. More and more college age students are using gmail and firefox as oppossed to outlook and internet explorer. Does anyone use AOL anymore?

By: Tell MS you want better formatted email in Outlook @ AskWoody.com

Tell MS you want better formatted email in Outlook @ AskWoody.com — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:39:03 +0000

[...] Long Zheng at istartedsomething knows whereof he speaks. See his comments on the matter. I, too, am distressed that many of the people joining the drive are trying to get MS [...]