When I was 9 years old, I remember my uncle reading emails on his MSN account. I asked him a few questions about emailing (he’s an ‘IT guy’) and he gave me a simple explanation then asked me if I wanted an email account – of course I said “YES!”. 13 years and 6 Hotmail accounts later I realise that it’s time.
Reader, I present you with this question; do you have a Hotmail account?
Most people opt for Gmail these days – others are internet veterans clenching to their Yahoo accounts – and others use their own personal email providers. The point is; there is a mass amount of very reliable options for having your own email account.
I’m a web developer so it is very likely that there would come a time where either someone would ask me to hack into someone else’s account or to develop newsletters / email templates. It just so happens that I’ve been presented with both options but we shall only talk about the latter.
The worst it can ever get
So lets dig into some code… VERY basic code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>Everyone Loves Code</title> </head> <body> <p>Hello world</p> </body> </html>
So the above code will present you with the above results (to the right) and that is rendered in a standard way across all browsers and email clients. Now there comes a point in time when a company takes it too far and Microsoft has definitely taken it too far with this next example:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Everyone Loves Code</title>
<style>
h2 {
color:#000000; /* black */
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Hello world</h2>
</body>
</html>
Nothing fancy, just the addition of a style and the replacing of the <p> tags to a <h2> tags.
In the diagram above you can see the distinct difference between the two examples:
- In the section titled ‘Hotmail’ the text is not bold and decorated in a lovely green colour almost basking in the beauty of green pastures.
- In the example of the browser, the text is dark and cold with bold font and ohh it so disgusting.
Having said this, I never coded my text to bask in the beauty of green pastures or weight itself normal as opposed to bold.
I respect Bill Gates in many many ways as he has done some marvellous things, but after leaving Microsoft I do believe the company has continued to falter with their Trident engine; however, this is just sad. Hotmail being unable to even render /display / interpret the most basic of HTML?
I’m not arguing the fact that there are work-a rounds or ‘tweaks’ which can get the above code to work but why should I have to? Some common places where using HTML in emails is important is with use of newsletters and using it to enhance a ‘standard’ email. I believe all businesses should have a corporate email template when dealing with their customers as it adds so much more to the face of their company.
What of small businesses not being able to afford extensive research and development, unable to ad-hear to standard test policies and unable to tap into extensive knowledge-based systems? What of those small companies? This isn’t only about an <h2> tag in an HTML email, it’s about the global troll that Internet Explorer has embarked on and their egotistical response to all their major upgrades. As a developer I’ve spent many frustrating nights seeking to develop some type of consistency between Webkit (Chrome / Safari), Gecko (Firefox), Trident 6.0 (IE6), Trident 7.0 & 8.0 (IE7 / IE8) and Trident 9.0 & 10.0 (IE9/ IE10) – as have millions of developers.
The conclusion?
I thought Internet Explorer was bad but this is almost comical – it’s companies like these that I’d never work for given almost any circumstance. I definitely think that it’s time to say goodbye to everything Microsoft.
Definitions:
Internet Explorer, Hotmail and Web Developers
“A web developer is a person who looks at a website’s name (e.g. www.google.com) and makes pretty images and colours appear on it =)”
– J.Holder. Do you use Windows Live Hotmail? 12/06/2012
“Internet Explorer is an Internet browser developed by Microsoft and don’t use it.”
– J.Holder. Do you use Windows Live Hotmail? 12/06/2012
“Hotmail is a web-based email service developed by Microsoft”
– J.Holder. Do you use Windows Live Hotmail? 12/06/2012
If you are using Internet Explorer, I strongly recommend downloading:
Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Safari.
Have a nice day =)
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