Yeah, the 140 character limit was becoming a bit stiffling!
We (the agency I work at, The Team) take every opportunity to educate clients as to the importance of open web standards. The message hasn't changed since myself and Phil Hawksworth left you and Osmosoft to join The Team.
But another thing we bang on about is inclusive design. I'm not just talking about this as an aspect of accessibility; I mean avoiding limiting the reach of your communications. Our clients include the NHS who are trying to use the web to help improve the health of the nation, particularly "hard to reach" users. And Becta who are trying to improve our children's tech literacy by helping families who can't afford computers or broadband connections. "Don't design for those people"??
Web standards are important. But they pail in significance next to our client's goals. And nothing - nothing! - is gained by taking a stand on this point; the work will simply go elsewhere, along with the client relationship. Everyone loses.
I believe that open source alternatives to Outlook will eventually replace Outlook - and good riddance. But until that happens, we do what we can - we club together, and ask Microsoft to reverse this ridiculous, badly thought through decision. And, in doing so, we promote the better way to do these things. That's what'll get organisations to change.
cdent
· 6 months ago
I appreciate the value of what you are trying to do and I commend it. It is great to reach hard to reach people with information that will improve their lives.
It's interesting, though, that you use hard to reach people, who may not have access to broadband or computers, who don't have resources available to them as an example for why you should design for closed and non-free (as in beer) software. That doesn't seem to be the right argument on your part.
If you want to design and develop for the downtrodden, free is often good, yes?
But I don't want to belabor that. My main goal in saying something about the outlook situation is that there are alternatives, and the alternatives have value, and the ideas behind them as well.
We're working towards the same thing (an informed and enabled population) from different sides of the issue. We'll meet in the middle and it will be good.
Phil Whitehouse
· 6 months ago
"It's interesting, though, that you use hard to reach people, who may not have access to broadband or computers, who don't have resources available to them as an example for why you should design for closed and non-free (as in beer) software."
It's because they use Outlook. They might use their computer at work, or in a library, or even have an old computer at home - and still quality for help. For the most part they don't know it's closed software, and generally they couldn't care less. And we still really want to help them.
I think we're approaching our work in different ways. You can afford to be more idealistic, because in many ways this is exactly the kind of audience you want to attract. Our audience is pre-defined, much larger (everyone in the UK, for the NHS work) and we need to be as inclusive as possible - otherwise we've failed.
FND
· 6 months ago
> Our audience is pre-defined, much larger [...] and we need to be as > inclusive as possible
While I was trying not to get into this argument, doesn't that mean you should use the lowest common denominator - i.e. plain-text e-mails?
Phil Whitehouse
· 6 months ago
Unfortunately, plain text emails just aren't as effective as richer variations. The more visually enticing an email is (using graphics, brand styles, etc.), the more likely it will be read, and thus lead to action.
And given that it's possible to create emails that look great in Outlook - just a real ballache - we don't have a strong enough counter-argument against the improved effectiveness.
ps, you, not get into an argument? That's what we like about you! :-)
FND
· 6 months ago
> Unfortunately, plain text emails just aren't as effective as richer variations.
Not necessarily... (Remember Comic Sans?)
> The more visually enticing an email is [...] the more likely it will be read
If you really need that fancy representation, you could just link to it on the web... (Obviously there are Real World issues with that; pattern recognition, click-through rate etc.)
Phil Whitehouse
· 6 months ago
Yeah, click through rate is a biggie. We're under a lot of pressure to demonstrate effectiveness (as per our home page) - to such an extent that we've sometimes got to remind clients that, even thought something might not be measurable, doesn't mean it's not doing good!
But more importantly; what's going to happen to Chris' blog if we keep on nesting these comments? Will we break teh internets?
philhawksworth
· 6 months ago
I watched this exchange as it happened and can see arguments on both sides.
For me, email is a text based medium. Keeping it as such gives us the best chance of interoperability. I don't compose emails in HTML or even rich text because you can never be sure of the capabilities of the recipients email client. So Chris, on a personal level, I'm with you there.
The problem is that assuming that everyone has the the power to choose their own email client is a little naive. Think of the huge numbers of people using the applications that they were given by their company IT department. Most people (sadly) simply don't get to choose and Outlook has a huge user base in companies and large enterprises where these things are tightly controlled.
To be honest, I personally don't really care if people receiving html emails don't get pages which don't look right or are broken. If html emails aren't reliable enough, perhaps people will send them less. The big issue for me is that there are loads of people (including our clients) who do care about this, and they write html so that it works where they need it to. Do we really want to educate people to write html to work in some half-baked, fugly, non-standard, pseudobrowser? I want there to be a rising tide in Web development which means putting naughty browsers (and html rendering engines) out to pasture and embracing Web standards.
Would the problem go away if nobody sent html email? Sure. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. There are just too many controlled environments where user choice isn't the deciding factor. I'm keen to develop Web sites which ignore the limitations of IE6 and simply tell users to upgrade, but I can't do that if I also need to serve people stuck over the wrong side of that impenetrable hedge. Turning a totally blind eye and hoping that it goes away can't be the right approach.
While html emails exist, I'd prefer that they did so in a way that didn't damage the Web and the quality of its developers.
All Comments
Yeah, the 140 character limit was becoming a bit stiffling!
We (the agency I work at, The Team) take every opportunity to educate clients as to the importance of open web standards. The message hasn't changed since myself and Phil Hawksworth left you and Osmosoft to join The Team.
But another thing we bang on about is inclusive design. I'm not just talking about this as an aspect of accessibility; I mean avoiding limiting the reach of your communications. Our clients include the NHS who are trying to use the web to help improve the health of the nation, particularly "hard to reach" users. And Becta who are trying to improve our children's tech literacy by helping families who can't afford computers or broadband connections. "Don't design for those people"??
Web standards are important. But they pail in significance next to our client's goals. And nothing - nothing! - is gained by taking a stand on this point; the work will simply go elsewhere, along with the client relationship. Everyone loses.
I believe that open source alternatives to Outlook will eventually replace Outlook - and good riddance. But until that happens, we do what we can - we club together, and ask Microsoft to reverse this ridiculous, badly thought through decision. And, in doing so, we promote the better way to do these things. That's what'll get organisations to change.
It's interesting, though, that you use hard to reach people, who may not have access to broadband or computers, who don't have resources available to them as an example for why you should design for closed and non-free (as in beer) software. That doesn't seem to be the right argument on your part.
If you want to design and develop for the downtrodden, free is often good, yes?
But I don't want to belabor that. My main goal in saying something about the outlook situation is that there are alternatives, and the alternatives have value, and the ideas behind them as well.
We're working towards the same thing (an informed and enabled population) from different sides of the issue. We'll meet in the middle and it will be good.
It's because they use Outlook. They might use their computer at work, or in a library, or even have an old computer at home - and still quality for help. For the most part they don't know it's closed software, and generally they couldn't care less. And we still really want to help them.
I think we're approaching our work in different ways. You can afford to be more idealistic, because in many ways this is exactly the kind of audience you want to attract. Our audience is pre-defined, much larger (everyone in the UK, for the NHS work) and we need to be as inclusive as possible - otherwise we've failed.
> inclusive as possible
While I was trying not to get into this argument, doesn't that mean you should use the lowest common denominator - i.e. plain-text e-mails?
And given that it's possible to create emails that look great in Outlook - just a real ballache - we don't have a strong enough counter-argument against the improved effectiveness.
ps, you, not get into an argument? That's what we like about you! :-)
as richer variations.
Not necessarily... (Remember Comic Sans?)
> The more visually enticing an email is [...] the more likely it will be read
If you really need that fancy representation, you could just link to it on the web...
(Obviously there are Real World issues with that; pattern recognition, click-through rate etc.)
But more importantly; what's going to happen to Chris' blog if we keep on nesting these comments? Will we break teh internets?
For me, email is a text based medium. Keeping it as such gives us the best chance of interoperability. I don't compose emails in HTML or even rich text because you can never be sure of the capabilities of the recipients email client. So Chris, on a personal level, I'm with you there.
The problem is that assuming that everyone has the the power to choose their own email client is a little naive. Think of the huge numbers of people using the applications that they were given by their company IT department. Most people (sadly) simply don't get to choose and Outlook has a huge user base in companies and large enterprises where these things are tightly controlled.
To be honest, I personally don't really care if people receiving html emails don't get pages which don't look right or are broken. If html emails aren't reliable enough, perhaps people will send them less. The big issue for me is that there are loads of people (including our clients) who do care about this, and they write html so that it works where they need it to. Do we really want to educate people to write html to work in some half-baked, fugly, non-standard, pseudobrowser? I want there to be a rising tide in Web development which means putting naughty browsers (and html rendering engines) out to pasture and embracing Web standards.
Would the problem go away if nobody sent html email? Sure. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. There are just too many controlled environments where user choice isn't the deciding factor. I'm keen to develop Web sites which ignore the limitations of IE6 and simply tell users to upgrade, but I can't do that if I also need to serve people stuck over the wrong side of that impenetrable hedge. Turning a totally blind eye and hoping that it goes away can't be the right approach.
While html emails exist, I'd prefer that they did so in a way that didn't damage the Web and the quality of its developers.