Locality Switch

I’ve been playing around with MailChimp, which I am thinking may be used for a monthly member’s email at my local station. MailChimp, I have found, does a very nice job of allowing me to add images into a predefined template and write some content for it. However, what if I want to code my own emails?

Writing HTML to be displayed in email clients could be one of the riskiest things I ever do. Even more riskier than deploying a site written in Apache Tomcat (I never got along with that beast)!

Luckily, MailChimp has a nice little guide to help me out. It’s entitled How To Code HTML Emails, and contains advice such as this:

An HTML email is nothing but a web page. That’s it. I’m sorry if you thought there was more to it than that. So if you can code your own web page, you can code your own HTML email templates. There is a little catch, though. You have to code like it’s 1996 (I’ll explain later).

One little catch?

Do they even remember what the web was like in 1996? Incase you have forgotten what the web in ’96 looks like, there is a handy guide avaliable for you:

the technology was different in 1996. Although Internet Explorer 3.0 could run Java applets and inline media, Netscape Navigator could not, and in any case nobody felt comfortable doing anything more complicated than making a few animated GIFs. Additionally, very few web designers had even the most rudimentary of aesthetic sensibilities, and nearly half of them were clinically retarded. The internet in 1996 looks like it had been created in its entirety by a panel of 13-year-olds with Geocities accounts who had about half an hour to spare each night before bedtime.

From: https://www.msu.edu/~karjalae/internet96.htm

If you follow the link to that page, you will see some beautiful screen shots of the web in ’96. Wow!

Why would MailChimp tell us to code like that? It’s pathetic! Sadly, the safest way to code emails is to code like it’s 1996. Sadly.

Mail clients haven’t caught up with the rest of the world. Tables are the way to go, because email clients love to strip out half of your code, including CSS! I forgot the last time I wrote a page using a table for layout purposes – why are emails so backwards?!

There is the Email Standards Project which works “with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email”. Hey, they even publish a report on the status of each major client. Not surprisingly, Lotus Notes and Outlook 2007 are the worst, along with Gmail!

Their testing is based on their own Acid Test.

Let’s hope email clients can catch up with the rest of the world, and stop behaving like Internet Explorer 3.0!

Every now and again I come across things on the internet which are really unique, and awesome. Today while I was browsing the Holroyd City Council website, I found this fascinating tool which they were using to test user experiences – Loop11. Here’s the blurb from their site:

Loop11 is a web-based user-experience testing tool, allowing companies to conduct online, unmoderated user testing on any kind of digital interface. Loop11 is not a survey or web analytics tool, but a user experience tool… helping you to understand user behaviour.

Loop11 is opt-in from the user’s point of view. You have to choose to undertake the tests – they are not forced upon you. Loop11 allows you to setup tests for your users to undertake, and record the results of their experience. For example, you could be asked to find information on council waste services. When you find what you are asked to find, you press the “Complete” button. Simple.

All of your experiences are recorded, and the web developers of the site can evaluate the results to help improve the site. You can see where users have difficulties in navigation and finding information on your site.

It’s currently in private beta, but I am holding out for a public beta to be released soon. I seriously haven’t seen something like this before – it’s quite unique.

There’s only a couple of problems I can see with this approach to usability testing:

• Users have to opt-in
• Users who opt-in are more likely to be more computer literate, and may be able to complete the tests easier than non-computer literate folks

As a result of the above two points, I can see that this approach could deliver skewed results. However, if used in combination with other metrics, it could really help developers create more user-friendly sites.

I reckon we should all watch Loop11 closely to see if they deliver a successful product, and a successful approach to user acceptance testing.