email standards project, email-standards.org

December 28 2007

About a month ago, some of my various google or technorati alerts linked me to a new website called the "email standards project".  Their objective:

The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.
Their initial test results were not too positive for Lotus Notes 8 -- "improvement recommended" was the polite way they described their testing of Notes 8.

I was pretty surprised to see their test results, because Notes 8 now uses an embedded browser control to render HTML mail.  The project's "acid test" e-mail looked pretty different to me than their posted results.

Over the last few weeks, I've had an ongoing dialogue with the people running this project, as well as with the Notes development organization.  It turns out that the email standards project did their Notes 8 testing in POP/IMAP mode, which -- at least according to their test -- uses the built-in Notes HTML rendering engine.  Notes 8 doesn't fare so well that way in their tests.  Development says that there is a way to configure a POP3 mailbox in Notes 8 to use the embedded browser to render HTML, but the standards project testers couldn't configure that.  Thus, for POP and IMAP users, "improvement recommended" may in fact be the outcome of the moment.

Put a Domino server in the equation, though, and Notes 8 renders the "acid test" e-mail nearly flawlessly, using the standard Mail8.ntf template and MIME (rather than rich text) settings.  Matthew Patterson posted an update on the email standards blog following our interactions of the last few weeks:
As you can see in these partial screenshots, the Domino server version renders much closer to our Acid Test. IBM tells us that almost 90% of their customers are using Lotus Notes 8 with Domino Server, which use Internet Explorer for HTML email rendering when viewing emails. This is great news! Your subscribers on Notes may be getting a better experience than previously thought.
The original Notes 8 page hasn't been updated with this information, though, other than to indicate that those tests were done with Notes 8 as a POP/IMAP client.

I agree that the stand-alone Notes use case deserves a better experience, and even Notes 8 via Domino has room to grow in the area of HTML e-mail.  I don't have a resounding conclusion or road forward to communicate in this blog entry.  The point of posting this is to acknowledge the several people who have pinged me about this website in the last month, the willingness to work with us from the email standards project organization, and the importance of getting HTML mail as good as possible for typical use cases.  It's demonstrative of how important standards and interoperability are to helping everyone communicate better.

Ed Brill Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Messaging  Add/View Comments [16]

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  1. 1  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 12/28/2007 11:35:19 AM

    It's great to see that the feedback loop is a full cycle instead of a black hole. I'm also glad you pick up on these issues and help spread the word further. :-)

  1. 2  Gregg Eldred http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf | 12/28/2007 11:52:28 AM

    I would go out on a limb and say that standalone POP/IMAP support in Notes has never been great. Workable, but not on the order of Thunderbird or Eudora. I don't think that it is meant to be a "consumer" product (that is, it doesn't function too well without the Domino server). But any advancement in it's standalone features would be nice.

    Very nice.

  1. 3  David Bell  | 12/28/2007 12:09:49 PM

    Ed - might be worth posting or pointing to documentation on how to enable embedded browser rendering for POP/IMAP client use.

  1. 4  Keith Brooks http://lotustech.blogspot.com | 12/28/2007 2:15:06 PM

    I use my notes client as a pop/imap client and have done for over 10 years now. Thank goodness too given the mess of viruses that attacked outlook back then.

    I can't really complain about anything as far as html rendering. Yes occasionally some look funny, but 99% of the time they are fine. And my other mail clients(webmail based) do have many more problems.

    Be happy to test their emails and see what they see so to speak. Will go post on their site.

  1. 5  Sean  | 12/28/2007 2:24:11 PM

    So the spammers want to work with the developers of email clients to improve the rendering of their junk. I would not be inclinded to help them and they really should be working through the IEEE.

  1. 6  Stuart McIntyre http://collaborationmatters.com | 12/28/2007 3:15:59 PM

    I have recently migrated from Exchange/Outlook to using Notes 8.0.1 (beta) against Exchange in IMAP mode, and I have to say it works great, with pretty flawless HTML email rendering and not a winmail.dat in sight.

    Search the Domino Admin documentation for Manual configuration of IMAP in Offline Mode. Basically, you create a Notes ID and Mail database (using the Mail 8 template) as usual. Then go in the users address book, Advanced/Accounts and create a new account for IMAP offline. This has the effect of collecting all new email via IMAP and adding them to the Domino mail file. It will not, however, access the existing IMAP folders - these will need to be moved across manually.

    I then created a replica of the Mail file on my client to give me disconnected access. I like this solution - it looks like standard Domino mail, gives users a manageable way to migrate off "legacy" email systems, and works a whole lot better than the Notes R5-looking IMAP Online mail that was discussed at length earlier in the year.

  1. 7  Volker Weber http://vowe.net | 12/28/2007 3:32:09 PM

    That is an interesting option. Does that mean you are dumbing IMAP down to POP3 mode? Download mail instead of keeping it on the server and caching it locally? What is the benefit of using IMAP in this mode instead of plain POP3?

  1. 8  Christer Eklundh  | 12/28/2007 3:40:04 PM

    I also use Notes 8 with IMAP-connection to a Exchange-server. Everyting works ok with HTML-mail and all. My only problem is that my inbox will not autorefresh after replication so I have to do F9 to se my new emails.... :-(

  1. 9  Henry Ferlauto http://www.geniusinside.com | 12/28/2007 6:12:48 PM

    The 90% figure jumps out at me the most. I would have thought that number would be higher since IBM / Lotus doesn't really endorse or encourage the use of Notes as a stand-alone POP client.

    I think this test (and the publicity of it), really begs the question: Is IBM going to make any efforts to make Notes a stand-alone POP client? (i.e. configure the "Dislay Name" in the client, etc.)

  1. 10  Tim Haugen  | 12/29/2007 9:29:29 AM

    I've been using Notes as POP3 client at home for years, and dealing with the various oddities by version.

    Not to flatter others by imitation, but why not a clean, well written documentation and/or wizard to install Notes as a POP3 and/or IMAP client... and distribute it freely... e.g., with Symphony?

  1. 11  Alan Lepofsky http://www.alanlepofsky.net | 12/29/2007 2:47:40 PM

    @10 - Does the File > Preferences > Client Reconfiguration Wizard not help you do this POP3 setup? If you choose internet mail, it should then ask your incoming mail server, account name and password, etc. Users don't need to know about setting up account documents, location documents, etc.

  1. 12  Tim Haugen  | 12/29/2007 8:25:04 PM

    @11 - Not too bad, but still info a user would have to get to an Account document to update - e.g., ID & password for SMTP and preference to Not leave mail on the POP3 server. Also a bit more complex to get into things like multiple POP3 accounts or multiple users on a single system.

  1. 13  Ian White http://www.ianwhite.net | 12/30/2007 6:11:57 AM

    Gosh, looks like were are entering a time warp here - hey anyone remember Lotus Mail !

    :-)

  1. 14  Bob Balfe http://blog.balfes.net | 1/3/2008 1:28:26 PM

    @Tim - have you used or installed the mail utility I created a while back for Notes 8? It helps with mail rules if your SMTP server is not a Domino server.

    Check it out here: { Link }

  1. 15  Brian Leonard  | 1/3/2008 9:46:23 PM

    @3 - I'm pretty sure the embedded browser will be enabled in the POP template in 8.01 (still can be turned off through preferences).

  1. 16  ที่ดินเชียงใหม่  | 1/15/2009 11:14:05 PM

    I've been using Notes as POP3 client at home for years, and dealing with the various oddities by version.

    Not to flatter others by imitation, but why not a clean, well written documentation and/or wizard to install Notes as a POP3 and/or IMAP client... and distribute it freely... e.g., with Symphony?