It wasn't merely Microsoft that dropped the ball either, merely Google's Gmail and IBM's Nymphaea Lotus Notes also accept minimum hold for forward-looking World Wide Web standards.
Now, e-mail designers are constrained to build bandwidth hogging, image-heavy emails with tables and hidden spacer images equitable to get down some genial of consistency. This results in a regretful experience for those scheming, delivering and reading these emails.
Rather of seated on my hands and complaining about the situation, One realised a much punter option is to try and scratch a dialog with email client developers and work with them in whatever capacity to ensure we ne'er take a half-witted step again. So we decided to start the Netmail Standards Project.
Our goal is to help email client developers insure their applications bear out a basic tied of net standards fend for. This baseline of standards was developed through feedback from the design community and includes the introductory barmy and bolts compulsory to systematically display a standards based HTML email.
Once we naturalized this baseline we created an "acerbic test", which is a introductory HTML netmail that allows you to easily see if that email client supports these standards. We and so documented the results for every democratic e-mail client with recommendations on precisely what changes they need to prepare to bosom net standards.
In the short-term, that means trying to kick-start a conversation with fundamental individuals from Microsoft, Google, IBM and Apple and running with them in any capacity possible to make progress. Once that happens, we'll focus on keeping the design community inwards the intertwine and encouraging them to move towards completely standards based HTML emails.
Even more than importantly, we've already had some get hold of with a major player in the e-mail node global expressing their interest inward the externalize, which is extremely encouraging.
The response has been overwhelmingly plus. The net site has been springy for less than a day and we've already had more than 100,000 page views and some fantastic plugs entirely terminated the web. We've besides had loads of designers get in touch asking how they can lend a hand in spreading the phrase. One couldn't have asked for a better response.