Simply Put the agency blog

It is with great sadness but greater joy that I share the news that IE6 will finally be put to rest come this February. According to InfoWorld, Microsoft has finally given the thumbs up to an autoupdate of IE6 to IE7 which is set to occur on February 12.

As web designers, we’re constantly kept awake at night fighting crime in the war of browser compatibility issues, hoping only to build websites that deliver consistent experiences to all users regardless of their browser of choice. Microsoft did us all a favour with the release of IE7 not too long ago, marginalizing the differences in how it displays websites between it and its next leading competitor Firefox. But despite this and all the new features and innovations that IE7 brings to users, there still remains a significant portion of internet users who haven’t been incented enough to make the leap from IE6 to IE7. This essentially has meant that the designers who choose to make accomodations for outdated users must design websites for 3 very different browsers. Until now, that is.

On February 12, the update will roll-out and a good 30% of the internet population will see many websites in a whole new light and in the way they were truly designed to be seen (despite our greatest efforts, many websites are still not fully cross-browser compatible). For us, it means the old ‘tester’ computer that still runs IE6 may finally be unplugged. Coincidentally, its power supply died last week.

You can read the full article on InfoWorld here. For the truly stubborn, the article also mentions ways to avoid the autoupdate.

This is great news for the community, and it comes shortly after the announcement of another exciting IE milestone. It’s definitely a good time to be a web designer.

With the explosion of the social media landscape, marketers today have a lot more vehicles to choose from to carry their messages. But of those options, email marketing still holds its ground as a prominent and commonly used medium. What seems to have also not changed are the difficulties that those who produce creative work for emails continue to encounter.

We’ve come a long way from using Microsoft Word email templates, and designers today are doing phenomenal work within the tiny borders of an email client. The problem? With so many different modern email platforms available, and none following any common set of standards in the way they read, interpret, and display emails, designers are facing a dozen-times amplified version of the Internet Explorer vs. Firefox vs. Safari war that continues to roar on today (though we’re much closer to finding a common ground now). Whether the reader is using Gmail or Hotmail, Outlook or Thunderbird, emails just aren’t performing consistently. Imagine deploying a marketing piece and never knowing how it will look to your audience. And this is just from the perspective of the sender - consider the accessibility issues that riddle the readers.

Having done my fair share of email templates for clients in recent years, I can understand the cries of email designers everywhere. And so it was a relief when I stumbled upon the Email Standards Project. From the website:

The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.

Launched in November, the Email Standards Project is an advocator of the establishment of common standards for emails, and is probably the closest thing there is to a regulating body in this field. The site even offers a helpful rating system of various email platforms based on its own acid test.

The winners? Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, and Yahoo! Mail among a few others. Meanwhile, Gmail, Lotus Notes, and Outlook trail at the bottom of the performance rankings.

If we want to make the same progress with emails as we have with website standards, it’s important to spread the word and show your support. The Email Standards Project lists a number of ways that you can share your support, with blogging and linking to the site being two easy ones.

Read more about the project and why email standards are important on the Email Standards Project website.