Anthony Short — Friday 26th June, 11:00am

Fixoutlook.org - Using Twitter to petition Microsoft

Campaign Monitor recently invited us to help send a message to Microsoft about email rendering in Outlook 2010. We replied with an emphatic <font>yes!</font>

A little over a week ago our friends at Campaign Monitor asked us to help them use Twitter to send a message to Microsoft about their decision to use the Word rendering engine in Outlook 2010. The result was http://fixoutlook.org and an unprecedented 20,000 strong online movement that took everyone by surprise.

“In what may be one of the most successful Twitter campaigns in recent memory, more that 20,000 Twitter users have grouped together to “Twitter petition” Microsoft about their lack of web standards in Outlook 2010.”

So why the fuss?

“Microsoft have confirmed they plan on using the Word rendering engine to display HTML emails in Outlook 2010. This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS like float and position, no background images and lots more. Want proof? Here’s the same email in Outlook 2000 & 2010.”

Microsoft wanted feedback on Outlook 2010, so the web design and development community gave it to them – in spades. At the time of writing, there are 22,415 tweets from a passionate audience voicing their concerns, and all in less than 48 hours.

If you’ve been in the web design industry for any amount of time, you’ll most likely be aware of the trouble Microsoft has had with web standards in both email and on the web. The pain we may experience with IE6 is nothing compared to the nightmare that is email client software.

The Email Standards Project was founded to promote awareness of the lack of standards in email and to hopefully encourage the makers of the email clients to come to an agreement. The email standards environment has been steadily improving; that was of course, until Microsoft announced that that they will be using the Word rendering engine in Outlook 2010. A huge backward step.

So, with our help, Campaign Monitor skillfully crafted a rebuttal in the form of http://fixoutlook.org, which is essentially an effort to show Microsoft just how important standards are to the web.

Microsoft responds

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long for Microsoft to post their response on the Outlook Team Blog.

“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… Our customers enjoy using a familiar and powerful tool for creating e-mail, just as they do for creating documents.”

Now I’m not judging, but it’s clear to me that they’re missing the point. Fair enough, they’re only concerned with their customers – they’re a business. But at some point, we need to think of the non-corporate users and work to improve the internet for the benefit of everyone. That, and as email marketers we just want our jobs to be a little easier.

“It’s not good for users, not good for business, not good for designers. It’s not logical, not on-brand, and the opposite of a PR win.” – Jeffrey Zeldman

The blogosphere chimes in

A mere two hours after the launch blogs started firing up about the issue, helping to spread the word. TechCrunch, Mashable, PCPro, SitePoint, CNet, and ZDNet to name a few.

• Microsoft, Outlook Is Broken, Says 6,000 Tweets (And Growing). Fix It. - TechCrunch
• Sour Outlook - Jeffery Zeldman
• Microsoft Sees Your Tweets, But They’re Not Fixing Outlook - Mashable
• @msofficeus: 16,000+ Twitter Users Want You to Fix Outlook 2010. Pls Listen. - Mashable
• Designers criticise Outlook 2010 - PCPro
• Outlook 2010 to Set New Standard in Irritation - Sitepoint
• Users Pressure Microsoft to Fix Outlook - PCWorld
• Microsoft defends Outlook HTML decision - CNet
• Microsoft: Outlook’s not broken and we aren’t ‘fixing’ it - ZDNet

The result?

Seeing all those faces and conversations from around the world in near real-time was, and continues to be, awe-inspiring. It’s truly amazing the power the internet has to mobilise like-minded people into action.

Of course we won’t know whether the Fix Outlook campaign has worked until Outlook 2010 is released next year, but it’s obvious that it has certainly ruffled Microsoft’s feathers – hopefully to the point that they’ve taken notice and will reconsider their decision. Whether anything does come of Fix Outlook, it has definitely been the most exciting web project we’ve had the privilege of being involved in.

And for those of you interested in how the site was actually built, we’ll be putting together a post soon about everything that’s going on behind the scenes. There’s some serious technology happening in there for a single page site, so we’re sure you’ll love it as much we enjoyed building it.

2/12/09 4:31pm — If you’d like to read the article you can download a PDF version here.

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