I am in the middle of a site redesign, and this is one less thing standing in my way. I like 37signals’ take on MobileMe and IE6: I, too, am hoping this is the beginning of a trend. 

What is it about people still using IE6?

Now, my website is clearly not the most popular on the Internet, so I can’t assume 47% of everyone on the Web is using IE6. But I get a significant amount of traffic. From all over the globe. Lots of my site’s visitors might actually be looking for the Other Me (explanation), however, the fact remains: it’s a lot of traffic. Maybe it’s not as clean of a cross-section view as, say, CNN.com’s or NYTimes.com’s statistics might be, but it’s it’s good enough for me.

And, I’m not going to pretend IE7 is a great browser, but it’s a giant leap forward from IE6. Even my infrequently-booted Parallels-run copy of Windows XP has updated itself to IE7. Get with it people; do yourselves a favor and stop using the world’s shittiest browser.

SitePoint contributor Kevin Yank authored a post titled, “Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007.” I didn’t even get past the opening paragraph before I started having heart palpitations. You may recall an article I penned last November on the topic of formatting XHTML emails for today’s myriad mail clients.

If support for web standards in browsers is improving slowly, then support in email clients is moving at a glacial pace.

Microsoft has officially decided to drop the IE-based rendering support from Office Outlook 2007 in favor of… you guessed it, Word. Great Scott!

I wouldn’t categorize myself as a Microsoft hater, but this decision ranks up there on the Top 10 Most Moronic Moves Ever Made While Trying to Win Over Web Developers list. For the first time in years, Microsoft releases an update to their highly used web browsing client which is significantly more supporting of web standards than previous versions. Yet, Redmond opted to use Word’s far superior web page rendering engine in Outlook. I am, of course, being as sarcastic as I’ve ever been.

The news, as bad as it is, is not the end of HTML emails in Outlook. We’ll have to redesign them to be thinner, with less emphasis on appearance and more on getting back to plain-and-simple content.

Unless Microsoft does the old switchero, with the impending release of the consumer version of the Office 2007 System, expect to redesign your HTML email templates in favor a much less instead of what IE7 offers — much more.

If you have ever tried to send an (X)HTML email from your web apps, you and I both have a lot more to ask for.

I’m currently writing an application for a client of mine that’s rich in user interaction. In part, users can create accounts, verify email addresses, forget passwords, and more of the standard account-related functions. Needless to say, without any unnecessary overkill, we will be sending a good amount of emails to my client’s user base. I could have easily opted to send text-only messages, but the requirement included displaying a logo, bolding text, and other graphical presentations otherwise not available in text-only. So, without much hesitation, I charged ahead. Whip up some clean (and strict) XHTML, use loads of my already-fine-tuned CSS rules, pump in some content and we’re off!

Wrong. And this was just the beginning.

I use my Gmail account for testing — it’s convenient because all the messages get lumped into one conversation for easy review, not to mention the huge disk space and (my favorite) delete button closely within reach. But for all of Gmail’s successes, it sure wreaked havoc on my nicely-formatted XHTML messages. Evidently, Gmail strips every shred of code out of your email, and rebuilds it in its entirety before spitting it back into it’s wonderfully successful conversation view. Those unique div, span and other IDs? Gone. The short and sweet CSS rules? Gone, and definitely not working. Hell, even my one-line footer wrapped in a small tag didn’t render properly. I now know why I can’t read my itinerary confirmations from the airlines in Gmail.

To make sure I wasn’t out of my mind, I changed my testing email address to an account I manage with Outlook on Windows and Mail on the Mac. Naturally, the message came through looking as perfect as I could have ever imagined. I repeated this process with Mozilla’s Thunderbird and then webmail at Yahoo!, Hotmail, and AOL — all succeeded, but in different ways. Microsoft’s widely-used Outlook client performed the best (same goes for Outlook Web Access), followed closely by OS X’s Mail. Neither re-wrote my code. Yahoo! did better than Hotmail, but Hotmail’s new interface liked the HTML and CSS hybrid a little more than the old but it still wasn’t perfect.

I am fighting an in-browser application war! Here we have browser-based applications developed by the world’s largest software manufacturers performing the same basic functions displaying standard XHTML and CSS content from the same source — and it just doesn’t work. Grrr. In the end, it’s Gmail that is causing the biggest headaches.

Yesterday, I finished restructuring the code following tips I read about on this highly-useful Interweb (I love that old Verizon DSL commercial). Here are a few that helped me get going again:

• Don’t put anything in the head of your email template.
• Forget the love you have for your fine-tuned CSS document; there’s no hope of using it (as an externally linked file). You’ll have to drop all your classes and ids replacing them with hideous inline styles. If your email’s recipients use Gmail, you’ll need to do this one.
• If all else fails, especially with AOL, use a table to position your goodies. I can’t believe I typed that, but when it comes to this and saving time, it works.
• Have patience. I nearly tossed my lappie out the window on more than one occasion.

As of yesterday, my client’s customers are ready to receive fancy-schmancy emails. No matter which mail client, web-based or desktop, Mac or Windows, they’ll all see the same content — as it was intended by this designer. Now that it’s done and I’m filling out my time sheet, I find myself having a hard time justifying the large chunks of time spent formatting arbitrary (yet critical) emails when there’s plenty of other work that needs doing. It seems funny to me but after all these messages, like them or not, are part of your app and, more importantly, your client’s outward-facing marketing.

So, take a few minutes and poke around. You’ll find articles written often daily, photography, details about my freelance work, and a list of some pretty amazing things. I hope you enjoy your stay, come back often, and feel free to comment on any articles.

Check out the article: Web accessibility soon mandatory in Europe? (from CNET News.com)