5 ms·

Microsoft: Outlook is Not “Broken”

31 points by FluidDjango 17y ago

TomOfTTB 17y ago
"Word enables Outlook customers to write professional-looking and visually stunning e-mail messages" As long as they're sending the e-mail to someone who also has Outlook and who isn't using the Outlook Web Access on their exchange server :) Seriously though Microsoft's obviously trying to shift the issue to Outlook's use of Word when really the issue is how bad their Word engine renders HTML (though I do think "fixoutlook.org" picked the very worst example for their comparison). It's a good way to win an argument but a bad way to take product suggestions.
- edave 17y ago
  Someone once aptly described to me how Microsoft handles standards as "they take a normal, rational standard that everyone agrees upon, then they screw it up just enough that only their products will work with it." To be fair- GMail doesn't display background colors either.
  - antidaily 17y ago
    Huh. I've had pretty good luck with Gmail and background colors. Maybe because I use tables.
snprbob86 17y ago
The primary source was posted 10 hours ago. Please up vote that instead of this blog spam: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672745 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672745
- TomOfTTB 17y ago
  I think the term Blog Spam refers to people who post their own Blog's posts. I don't see any obvious affliation between this user and the site they linked to. Moreover the merit of this piece is that it's a short synopsis of the entire story. You can think the article you link to has more validity as the original source and it's your choice to vote that one up and not this one. But it's kind of rude to call this post names simply because you deem it unworthy.
  - snprbob86 17y ago
    I've always used the term "blog spam", with respect to social link aggregators, to indicate a blog post which adds no apparent value to the source it is citing. I feel that is true in this case. Furthermore, I think that this blog is unfairly omitting details from the source material. The official blog post includes significant details about the editing experience of Microsoft Word. The quote in the intermediate blog post does not capture the nature of the Outlook team's argument. Even if the intermediate post did represent the argument accurately, it includes editorialization which I'd rather see in comments. Both HN submissions used the official title, as they are supposed to. I posit that this secondary source was upvoted more because of the more dramatic title. The posters are to blame for the discrepancy, not the HN submitters. My apologies for the meta-discussion, but I don't think I'm the only person who doesn't like intermediate, no-value-added blog posts.
    - TomOfTTB 17y ago
      I think the only thing I can say is that I don't necessarily question your logic. It seems sound. And I personally have no problem with the meta-discussion (though who am I to say either way). My only counter point is that your opinion is worth your one up vote which you most certainly shouldn't give to this post. Put another way I don't see any paticular problem with you posting a link to the original submission. My only issue was the indication that the person who submitted this story was guilty of wrong doing (again I think the brevity of the article does add value so I don't think it would count as blog spam even under your definition).
philjackson 17y ago
I really wish no one had ever thought of putting HTML into an email in the first place.
- TwoBit 17y ago
  While elaborate spam email is annoying, you don't really believe we should all be using plain text, do you?
  - rjurney 17y ago
    I believe that we should all be using plaintext for email. Plaintext and simple attachments. So MIME. But not HTML.
    - buro9 17y ago
      Basic HTML is nice, and that is what should have been supported in email. Just for things like headings and bullet points. I can very happily live without tables (attach a spreadsheet if it is important), css (let the text of my email be dictated by my client) and images (again, attach). But the need for headings and lists means that I do use HTML or Rich-Text (depending on the client) when it's available even though I seldom use anything beyond simple formatting. Oh, and we use RT as a help desk/support software, and that uses plain text. And I speak from experience that when you get a lengthy description of an issue turned into plain text it's very difficult to read. Headings and bullet points are pretty important.
      - rw 17y ago
        Then use Markdown. HTML is overkill.
        wizard_2 17y ago
        It's a little late for that no? HTML is already supported on almost every email client. And while I'm annoyed at every one liner email that's using html for text colors and backgrounds, there are very nice looking things you can do with html (duh) and I'm all for not limiting email communication to be plain text. Our email system is outdated and kludgey, people try to use it for file transfers, document management, instant messaging, photo sharing, etc. Spam is constantly an annoyance that despite wonderful filtering, probably can't be designed out of smtp. There's no easy way to have verifications of sender identity, or even have control over who's allowed to send mail for your domain. (domain keys, and spf records work, but most mail server will accept your mail anyway - We had a dns/ip change forced upon us and the tech forgot to update our spf records and we didn't notice a problem for a week. Some mail servers just tagged us as "possible" spam. The sad situation seems to be that a lot of spf records are wrong.) What I would really like to see is a way to federate Facebook messaging. I'm picking them for no reason other then a large user base, real names (mostly), built in spam protection and controls, video messaging, the ability to share content and have it highlighted in special ways. (It would then need file transfer support and maybe voice chat.) Oh and it shouldn't be Facebook it should be an open protocol. I guess what I'm describing isn't email, I just want it to replace email. Also ever since I saw the google tech demo, every message lately is looking like a "wave". That kind of rich messaging is what users look for. The reason something hasn't taken over email yet (I'm willing to guess) is that we don't all want one company being in charge of it. Jabber (the core tech behind wave) is free and open source and a known protocol that solves a lot if not all my gripes. And most importantly anyone can run it.
TallGuyShort 17y ago
People should realize that it doesn't matter how much you love your own product - if your customer's hate it, it's broken.
- chadgeidel 17y ago
  Are you sure Microsoft doesn't know this? I would imagine that the vast majority of Outlook users are corporate users. In this case Word is a better choice.
- JimmyL 17y ago
  We're not Microsoft's primary customer when it comes to considering Outlook. Neither is Travelocity, or pretty much anyone that would know what CSS even was, let alone be unhappy about the rendering used for it (or even know what a rendering engine was). Their core customer is Janice from Accounting, who sits on the Party Planning committee at BigCo. and wants to send out an invite to the company's Thanksgiving Party, for which she has selected some excellent WordArt to use. It's Phil the low-level VB.net developer, whose idea of version control is sending an email to himself with a huge attachment every night so he can recover off that if need be. It's Stacy from HR, whose email signature is in a pink script font, so that we know she's given that email a personal touch when she "signs" it like that. That's who Outlook is designed for - big corporate offices, where all 90% of the people want is to be able to send colorful emails with a drag-and-drop toolbar using an interface they are already intimately familiar with. And by that standard, their customers probably love the decision to use Word's authoring engine, and will simply blame the people they got the email from when it doesn't look right. Think of it this way: if you even know this controversy exists, you're a more technical user than those which Outlook is designed for.
  - TallGuyShort 17y ago
    Yeah, that's a very good point. I guess it's the same as the frustration we have with IE. Most people don't even notice a problem because they don't care. I'm not saying they SHOULDN'T care (at least on some issues), but I it really isn't Microsoft's target audience.
bitwize 17y ago
Combining e-mail and calendaring, and integrating it with the rest of the Office Suite was a masterstroke on Microsoft's part. It has streamlined office communication to the point where even shops where development is done on Linux machines have Exchange servers handling company email and I get funny looks from people who ask me, "That meeting didn't show up on your Outlook?" Outlook is broken only if you give a shit about openness or standards. Most people don't. Most people want to solve the problems immediately before them to make their lives easier. This Outlook achieves with aplomb.

31 points by FluidDjango 17y ago

"Word enables Outlook customers to write professional-looking and visually stunning e-mail messages" As long as they're sending the e-mail to someone who also has Outlook and who isn't using the Outlook Web Access on their exchange server :) Seriously though Microsoft's obviously trying to shift the issue to Outlook's use of Word when really the issue is how bad their Word engine renders HTML (though I do think "fixoutlook.org" picked the very worst example for their comparison). It's a good way to win an argument but a bad way to take product suggestions.

edave 17y ago
Someone once aptly described to me how Microsoft handles standards as "they take a normal, rational standard that everyone agrees upon, then they screw it up just enough that only their products will work with it." To be fair- GMail doesn't display background colors either.
- antidaily 17y ago
  Huh. I've had pretty good luck with Gmail and background colors. Maybe because I use tables.

snprbob86 17y ago

The primary source was posted 10 hours ago. Please up vote that instead of this blog spam: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672745 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=672745

TomOfTTB 17y ago
I think the term Blog Spam refers to people who post their own Blog's posts. I don't see any obvious affliation between this user and the site they linked to. Moreover the merit of this piece is that it's a short synopsis of the entire story. You can think the article you link to has more validity as the original source and it's your choice to vote that one up and not this one. But it's kind of rude to call this post names simply because you deem it unworthy.
- snprbob86 17y ago
  I've always used the term "blog spam", with respect to social link aggregators, to indicate a blog post which adds no apparent value to the source it is citing. I feel that is true in this case. Furthermore, I think that this blog is unfairly omitting details from the source material. The official blog post includes significant details about the editing experience of Microsoft Word. The quote in the intermediate blog post does not capture the nature of the Outlook team's argument. Even if the intermediate post did represent the argument accurately, it includes editorialization which I'd rather see in comments. Both HN submissions used the official title, as they are supposed to. I posit that this secondary source was upvoted more because of the more dramatic title. The posters are to blame for the discrepancy, not the HN submitters. My apologies for the meta-discussion, but I don't think I'm the only person who doesn't like intermediate, no-value-added blog posts.
  - TomOfTTB 17y ago
    I think the only thing I can say is that I don't necessarily question your logic. It seems sound. And I personally have no problem with the meta-discussion (though who am I to say either way). My only counter point is that your opinion is worth your one up vote which you most certainly shouldn't give to this post. Put another way I don't see any paticular problem with you posting a link to the original submission. My only issue was the indication that the person who submitted this story was guilty of wrong doing (again I think the brevity of the article does add value so I don't think it would count as blog spam even under your definition).

philjackson 17y ago

I really wish no one had ever thought of putting HTML into an email in the first place.

TwoBit 17y ago
While elaborate spam email is annoying, you don't really believe we should all be using plain text, do you?
- rjurney 17y ago
  I believe that we should all be using plaintext for email. Plaintext and simple attachments. So MIME. But not HTML.
  - buro9 17y ago
    Basic HTML is nice, and that is what should have been supported in email. Just for things like headings and bullet points. I can very happily live without tables (attach a spreadsheet if it is important), css (let the text of my email be dictated by my client) and images (again, attach). But the need for headings and lists means that I do use HTML or Rich-Text (depending on the client) when it's available even though I seldom use anything beyond simple formatting. Oh, and we use RT as a help desk/support software, and that uses plain text. And I speak from experience that when you get a lengthy description of an issue turned into plain text it's very difficult to read. Headings and bullet points are pretty important.
    - rw 17y ago
      Then use Markdown. HTML is overkill.
      - wizard_2 17y ago
        It's a little late for that no? HTML is already supported on almost every email client. And while I'm annoyed at every one liner email that's using html for text colors and backgrounds, there are very nice looking things you can do with html (duh) and I'm all for not limiting email communication to be plain text. Our email system is outdated and kludgey, people try to use it for file transfers, document management, instant messaging, photo sharing, etc. Spam is constantly an annoyance that despite wonderful filtering, probably can't be designed out of smtp. There's no easy way to have verifications of sender identity, or even have control over who's allowed to send mail for your domain. (domain keys, and spf records work, but most mail server will accept your mail anyway - We had a dns/ip change forced upon us and the tech forgot to update our spf records and we didn't notice a problem for a week. Some mail servers just tagged us as "possible" spam. The sad situation seems to be that a lot of spf records are wrong.) What I would really like to see is a way to federate Facebook messaging. I'm picking them for no reason other then a large user base, real names (mostly), built in spam protection and controls, video messaging, the ability to share content and have it highlighted in special ways. (It would then need file transfer support and maybe voice chat.) Oh and it shouldn't be Facebook it should be an open protocol. I guess what I'm describing isn't email, I just want it to replace email. Also ever since I saw the google tech demo, every message lately is looking like a "wave". That kind of rich messaging is what users look for. The reason something hasn't taken over email yet (I'm willing to guess) is that we don't all want one company being in charge of it. Jabber (the core tech behind wave) is free and open source and a known protocol that solves a lot if not all my gripes. And most importantly anyone can run it.

TallGuyShort 17y ago

People should realize that it doesn't matter how much you love your own product - if your customer's hate it, it's broken.

chadgeidel 17y ago
Are you sure Microsoft doesn't know this? I would imagine that the vast majority of Outlook users are corporate users. In this case Word is a better choice.
JimmyL 17y ago
We're not Microsoft's primary customer when it comes to considering Outlook. Neither is Travelocity, or pretty much anyone that would know what CSS even was, let alone be unhappy about the rendering used for it (or even know what a rendering engine was). Their core customer is Janice from Accounting, who sits on the Party Planning committee at BigCo. and wants to send out an invite to the company's Thanksgiving Party, for which she has selected some excellent WordArt to use. It's Phil the low-level VB.net developer, whose idea of version control is sending an email to himself with a huge attachment every night so he can recover off that if need be. It's Stacy from HR, whose email signature is in a pink script font, so that we know she's given that email a personal touch when she "signs" it like that. That's who Outlook is designed for - big corporate offices, where all 90% of the people want is to be able to send colorful emails with a drag-and-drop toolbar using an interface they are already intimately familiar with. And by that standard, their customers probably love the decision to use Word's authoring engine, and will simply blame the people they got the email from when it doesn't look right. Think of it this way: if you even know this controversy exists, you're a more technical user than those which Outlook is designed for.
- TallGuyShort 17y ago
  Yeah, that's a very good point. I guess it's the same as the frustration we have with IE. Most people don't even notice a problem because they don't care. I'm not saying they SHOULDN'T care (at least on some issues), but I it really isn't Microsoft's target audience.

bitwize 17y ago

Combining e-mail and calendaring, and integrating it with the rest of the Office Suite was a masterstroke on Microsoft's part. It has streamlined office communication to the point where even shops where development is done on Linux machines have Exchange servers handling company email and I get funny looks from people who ask me, "That meeting didn't show up on your Outlook?" Outlook is broken only if you give a shit about openness or standards. Most people don't. Most people want to solve the problems immediately before them to make their lives easier. This Outlook achieves with aplomb.